The Sublime Ring: Romantic Poetics of the Wreath in Coleridge, Keats, Shelley and Wordsworth
“It is a gentle and affectionate thought, that in immeasurable height above us, at our first birth, the wreath of love was woven with sparkling stars for flowers.”
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“A Garland, where comes neither rain, nor wind.”
-Henry Vaughan
While there are many common sentiments expressed through poetic imagery that are shared between the poets of the Romantic period, there is one such image that repeats itself and shows up in numerous works penned by William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysse Shelley, and John Keats, each seeming to speak to something larger than the object itself. John Beer writes in his 1983 article “Nature and Liberty: the Linking of Unstable Concepts” that “the movement from one way of looking at the world to another which was an essential feature of the Romantic period naturally involved a change in the significance of certain keywords” (201). Beer focuses on the shift in the meaning of the words “nature” and “liberty” in his article, but I would like to propose that there is also a shift in the symbolism attached to the word and image of the wreath. Dahlia Porter notes in her 2017 article “Specimen Poetics” that “Botanical metaphors for the poetic collection have a very long history. Rooted in the garland of Melegar of Gadara and the Silvae of Statius, for centuries verses have been gathered up into anthologies, gardens, glands, woods, wreaths, and bouquets” (61). It is the image of the poetic wreath that repeats itself in these four poets' works. The wreath functions as a botanic metaphor for the face of poetry, the sublime, which suggests a common representation of the sublime.
The Romantic movement Beer describes is similar to what John Ruskin states in Of the Pathetic Fallacy: that it is the poets’ role to assign a human meaning to inanimate objects, that the application of human feelings to these objects presents a truth that would otherwise be unseen. Ruskin writes that “this power is always there, in the thing, whether we are there to experience it or not, and would remain there though there were not left a man on the face of the earth” (63). This is true of the physical form of the wreath. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word wreath as follows: “Something twisted into a circular shape” and “A ring, band, or circlet” (OED). There is a long history of wreaths representing glory and power: the ancient Greek laurel wreath, the Biblical wreath of thorns worn by Christ on the cross, and the well-documented wreaths of hair commonly shared between Victorian lovers.
It is not uncommon for human feelings to be applied to the “inanimate” object of the wreath. Yet the image of the wreath is predominately used to represent a union of the human and nature by the four Romantic giants: Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth. These four poets cultivate the poetics of the wreath. The wreath itself has the capacity of matter versatility. In Shelley’s poem “Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude” (1815) the wreath is not one created by nature but one fashioned of the light during a particular time of day: “Twilight, ascending slowly from the east, / Entwined in duskier wreaths” (lines 334-335). It is the twilight that is twisted into the circular shape of a wreath. This is an example of how the wreath is a versatile object, one that can be crafted out of any element, yet steadfastly used to represent a poetic observation.
While the wreath in Shelley is one of intangible light, the wreath appears as a concrete object in other Romantic poems with the same care and attention to detail. In “The Rose” (1793) by Coleridge, the image of the wreath appears God-like within its ability to inspire attraction through light: “A sleeping Love I spied. / Around his brows a beamy wreath / Of many a lucent hue” (lines 4-6). The wreath for Coleridge has the capacity to generate light, to be a guiding source of attraction between the speaker and the rose. Shelley uses the word “beamy” to describe the wreath, meaning the light shines from it. The wreath has the capacity to itself create. In the case of “The Rose,” the wreath is a description of the anatomy of the rose, a naturally occurring ring, a creation of nature.
In both of these examples from Coleridge and Shelley there is an uncovered hint of prosopopeia, the device commonly used by Romantic poets in order for what is absent to communicate through the speaker. In the natural shape of a wreath, there is always something that is absent, something to fill the ring that is not present. It is the definition of a wreath for there to be a fundamental lack of material, leaving the inner ring of the wreath to be filled by that which it is not. In the 1790s, Romantic literary critic and essayist William Hazlitt visited Lake School poets Wordsworth and Coleridge, following which trip he penned the 1823 essay, “My First Acquaintance with Poets.” In this essay he details the visit and offers his thoughts on the unique relationship with the natural world that was forged by the poets he made acquaintance with. Through his essay, a unifying theme begins to emerge, one of the “face of Poetry” and the “face of nature.” While the face of nature follows the rhetorical device of prosopopeia, in Hazlitt’s idea of Poetry’s face in “My First Acquaintance with Poets” the eyes of the natural world begin to emerge as doors of perception. The inclusion of the wreath is another example of this “face of poetry” and as a door of perception from which the poet expresses emotion. The wreath in itself functions as a door. Through the negative space of the wreath, meaning can be assigned. It is the versatile physical shape of the wreath from which representation can be created.
In Hazlitt’s piece, his first experience with poetry is that it is alive, similar to both Coleridge’s and Shelley’s wreaths in “To a Rose” and “Alastor.” The wreaths are alive and entities within themselves; they generate light, they shape themselves out of twilight. The Romantics create the poets of the wreath through their inclusion of the physical form in different interactions of matter. Similar to a human, the poetics of the wreath has a face complete with eyes, ears, lips, and a mind. In Hazlitt, this poetry is an entity within itself. He writes after spending time with Coleridge, “On my way back, I had a sound in my ears, it was the voice of Fancy: I had a light before me, it was the face of Poetry. The one still lingers there, the other has not quitted my side!” (586). Hazlitt through his essay begins to see and hear Poetry in the Romantic sensibility. Coleridge, he describes, takes the art form and places a human characteristic to it: a face. The emergence of Poetry’s face does not linger as the “voice of fancy”, but instead stays with Hazlitt wholeheartedly through his trip. Once he has been exposed to this school of thought, the idea of Poetry’s face, it is with him forever. Hazlitt’s choice in his essay to point out the “voice” and the “face” is mirrored in Shelley’s “Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats:”
Another Splendour on his mouth alit,
That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath
Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded breath
And pass into the panting heart beneath
With lightning and with music:
The damp breath
Quench’d its caress upon his icy lips;
And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath
Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips,
It flush’d through his pale limbs, and pass’d to its eclipse
(XII Lines 1-9)
In Shelley’s elegy, the wreath is once more formed by intangible matter. The “moonlight vapour” echoes the wreath in his “Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude” that is made of twilight. Both are formed by elements of the universe. The wreath in “Adonais” has been placed upon the dead body of John Keats in the previous stanza by “she” who can be read as Keats’s fiancé, Fanny Brawne. “Another clipp’d her profuse locks, and threw / The wreath upon him, like an anadem, / Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem” (XI lines 3-5). The first wreath in Shelley’s elegy is one of the mourning woman’s hair, an element of human matter, decorated by human tears. In the next stanza the second wreath is introduced, this one being composed of moonlight vapor stained by a dying meteor.
There have been many readings of wreath imagery in metaphysical poetry, including a notable piece written by Judy Z. Kronenfeld in her 1981 article: “George Herbert’s ‘A Wreath’ and Devotional Aesthetics: Imperfect Efforts Redeemed by Grace.” Kronenfeld eloquently describes the complex connotation of the wreath, writing: “in themselves [they] seriously raise the problem of the relationship of man’s making and God’s … They are inferior, unnatural, or inappropriate crowns, when made by man” (290). She continues to describe the long-standing association of wreaths and crowns, that “they were used quite interchangeably as general metaphors for being ‘crowned’ or ‘praised’ as a result of spiritual-moral virtue” (292). In Shelley’s “Adonais” the wreath is this, a metaphor for Keats’s lasting impact on the poetic world. Of the two wreaths mentioned by Shelley, one is man made of hair, and the latter is a metaphorical creation of the sublime, the unimaginable marriage of the elements of moonlight vapour stained by a meteor.
It is no coincidence that Shelley chose to have the object in this poem be a wreath. The wreath is both present and absent; it is the representation of the sublime—a meeting of the human emotion and the natural world that is indescribable. This is why the Romantic poets chose to include the wreath in their various works. It functions as a device to which meaning can be attached. Ruskin writes of the pathetic fallacy that it occurs when “the mind admits when affected strongly by emotion” (64). It is a natural world object which evokes human reaction and can therefore function as a container for this emotion to be expressed through. The wreath itself is an incredibly versatile concept. It can be expressed as feeling through the use of prosopopeia, it can be a representation of the sublime, and through a reading of Hazlitt it can be the poetic face of poetry.
Some Romantic poets followed Hazlitt's thought and depicted the wreath as a living object, with a suggested “face.” In Wordsworth’s 1798 “Lines Written in Early Spring,” the wreath breathes: “Through primrose tufts, in that green bower, / The periwinkle trailed its wreaths; / And ’tis my faith that every flower / Enjoys the air it breathes” (Lines 9-12). Here it is the periwinkle that creates the wreath consisting of flowers that breathe. The breath of the wreath in these lines calls back to Hazlitt’s face of poetry, continuing beyond the mere voice that comes from the natural world’s lips to suggest through prosopopeia that the natural world can breathe. Hazlitt remarks, “With what eyes these poets see nature” (589). This astute observation applies not merely to the poet, but also to the poetry they create and the imagery they create in the inclusion of the rings of wreaths. As Ruskin would argue, the periwinkle wreath would be breathing even if Wordsworth had not witnessed and brought it to life. Beer writes on Wordsworth’s poetry in general, “Wordsworth evokes actual images of nature: the single star, the sound of the sea, the sense of the naked heaves, the brook in the open sunshine; yet the process is deliberately selective and the emergent undertone rhetorical and moral … They are in many cases images of purity and clarity” (206). The wreath easily can be added to this list of nature images. It is upon this ring of creation that Hazlitt would find the face of poetry—the poetics of the wreath—and it is Wordsworth who illustrates this in his depiction of the periwinkle wreath.
During his visit with Coleridge, Hazlitt writes, “I went to Llangollen Vale, by way of initiating myself in the mysteries of natural scenery; and I must say I was enchanted with it. I had been reading Coleridge’s description of England in his fine Ode on the Departing Year, and I applied it, con amore, to the objects before me” (587). It is on this day trip that Hazlitt exclaims: “The valley was to me (in a manner) the cradle of a new existence: in the river that winds through it, my spirit was baptized in the waters of Helicon!” (587). The wreath itself functions as a “cradle of new existence” in Romantic poetry. As the image of a cornucopia symbolizes an abundance of wealth, the wreath functions as a symbol of Romantic poetics. While Coleridge, Shelley, and Wordsworth depict the wreath as an object distinctly separate from the human body, in John Keast’s “Ode to Psyche” the wreath appears internal to the human, a cradle of the mind’s existence: “And in the midst of this wide quietness / A rosy sanctuary will I dress / With the wreath’d trellis of a working brain / With buds, and bells, and stars without a name” (Lines 57-61).The wreath is attributed to an active and a creative mind and as something that can be adorned with buds, bells, and stars. The ring-like shape of a decorated wreath adoring the trellis of the mind is used to illustrate the human imagination.
To return to Coleridge’s wreaths, in his 1807 poem “To Wordsworth,” the image of the wreath appears once more. Lucy Newlyn writes in her epilogue to Coleridge, Wordsworth, and the Language of Allusion entitled “Triumphal Wreaths” of the relationship between Coleridge and Wordsworth, particularly through Coleridge’s “To Wordsworth.” Newlyn writes, “Coleridge is dedicated not just to exposing the fiction of eternity that has been built around him, but to revealing the human inadequacies which make him unfit for such a role” (197). In his poem, Coleridge both mourns and praises his friend. The wreath appears as follows: “To wander back on such unhealthful road, / Plucking the poisons of self-harm! And ill / Such intertwine beseems triumphal wreaths / Strew’d before thy advancing” (Lines 79-82). The tone of Coleridge’s poem, as Newlyn suggests in her epilogue, is one of mixed emotion. In these lines the wreaths on the surface appear to represent the triumph of Wordsworth’s life.
Yet Coleridge is walking a thin line between praise and disdain in his lines, as Newlyn writes “Coleridge is evidently weighing himself against the achievements of Wordsworth. It was to be his most bitter complaint, during the quarrel of 1810, that he had given his genius to and for his friend, subordinating his own creative powers and receiving nothing in return.”1 (195). While we have seen the wreath largely representing a positive and sublime expression of emotion, Coleridge’s wreaths in “To Wordsworth” further prove the versatility of the ring’s shape and the ways the Romantics attached a particular poetics to the image. The face of poetry presented in the wreath here is one of veiled condescension. Coleridge is presenting Wordsworth’s “triumphal wreaths” as intertwined with the poisons of self-harm and easily discarded and forgotten about when it becomes convenient, “Strew’d before thy advancing.” This is a rare instance of the wreath being an object capable of discarding. Unlike the examples from Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, and even Coleridge’s earlier mentioned poem, “To Wordsworth” presents the form of the wreath as capable of deception “beseeming triumph” while being little more than a decoration of self-harm.
To return to Keats for one final example of the poetic wreath, it is in his 1819 poem “Ode on Indolence” that brings together the human and the natural to represent the absence of a whole and the sublimity of human emotion. Keats writes “The blissful cloud of summer-indolence / Benumb’d my eyes; my pulse grew less and less; / Pain had no sting, and pleasure’s wreath no flower: / O, why did ye not melt, and leave my sense / Unhaunted quite of all but—nothingness? (Lines 16-20). The wreath here represents the sublime nothingness experienced by Keats. While the wreath is grounded in the natural world with the mention of the “flower” it is a wreath created by the human existence and experience of pleasure. To call back to Hazlitt’s face of poetry, here Keats links the wreath with sight by attributing it to a creation of human pleasure and the choice to turn away from it. The eyes numbed by the “blissful cloud” are intricately connected to the presence of the wreath of pleasure. Pleasure can see, and appears as a ring of existence. Keats’s speaker is questioning why pleasure’s wreath has not a flower, why his experience of pain has no sting. The speaker is attempting to express the sublime experience of existence yet is coming up with “nothingness.” Keats’s speaker is struggling to obtain the flower of pleasure’s wreath that is absent from these lines. In “Ode on Indolence” he struggles and ultimately succumbs to the undaunted nothingness. The wreath is a representation of a human emotion that can be cultivated by choosing to search for the flower, or to leave it flowerless as Keats’s speaker chooses to do.
The image of the wreath occurs so frequently in Romantic poetry that it demands our attention and analysis. As Beer wrote of the Romantic tendency to place new meaning on common words, objects, and terms, this is the case of the Romantic poetics of the wreath. It is a device which is used to represent both the natural world and the human experience. It is sublime in its simultaneous presence and absence—its shape versatile in image and meaning. The wreath directly speaks to Ruskin’s pathetic fallacy, maintains a capability to be the face of poetry described by Hazlitt, is commonly used with prosopopeia to express emotion, and is an object of the poetic imagination. The wreath is created by nature, and observed by the poet in various different iterations. Hazlitt writes, “In the outset of life (and particularly at this time I felt it so) our imagination has a body to it. We are in a state between sleeping and waking, and have indistinct but glorious glimpses of strange shapes, and there is always something to come better than what we see” (588). This sums up the function of the wreath in Romantic poetry. It is a representation of the poetic imagination, whether used by Shelley and Wordsworth to convey human emotion through natural botanic imagery, or by Coleridge and Keats to express the sublime human condition intertwining the image of the wreath with emotional ornament.
Works Cited:
Beer, John. “Nature and Liberty: The Linking of Unstable Concepts.” The Wordsworth Circle, vol. 14, no. 4, 1983, pp. 201–13. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24040638. Accessed 14 Dec. 2022.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “The Rose.” 1793.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “To William Wordsworth.” 1807.
Hazlitt, William. “My First Acquaintance with Poets.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature The Romantic Period. Tenth Edition. Vol. D. W.W. Norton & Company. 2018.
Keats, John. “Ode to Psyche.” 1819.
Keats, John. “Ode on Indolence.” 1848.
Kronenfeld, Judy Z. “Herbert’s ‘A Wreath’ and Devotional Aesthetics: Imperfect Efforts Redeemed by Grace.” ELH, vol. 48, no. 2, 1981, pp. 290–309. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2872973.
Newlyn, Lucy. Coleridge, Wordsworth, and the Language of Allusion. Oxford University Press. 1986.
Ruskin, John. “Of the Pathetic Fallacy.” 1856.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude.” 1815.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats.” 1886.
Wordsworth, William. “Lines Written in Early Spring.” 1798.
Wordsworth, William. “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour. July 13, 1798.” 1798.
Wordsworth, William. “The Excursion.” 1814.
Wordsworth, William. The Prelude: Book 1. The Norton Anthology of English Literature The Romantic Period. Tenth Edition. Vol. D. W.W. Norton & Company. 2018.
Oxford English Dictionary. https://www-oed-com.ezproxy.uvm.edu/view/Entry/230582?redirectedFrom=wreath#eid.
Newyln footnote following the mention of Coleridge and Wordsworth’s argument: “The best account of this quarrel still remains in Mary Moorman’s See The Later Years 1803-1850 (Oxford, 1965), 187-219