The concept of time is no stranger to the educated man and woman. In fact, it has become a god for most. It is the ruling entity by which all things are measured and given meaning. But romantic poets questioned and challenged this god. Blake, Wordsworth, and others alike did not believe that time was an absolute ruler, but rather that it was a malleable object tied to the individual and influenced by his or her human imagination. Time did not rule the romantic poets. Romantic poetry seems to classify life with experiences rather than with times. An example of this can be observed in the contrasting poems of the same name in Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. In both instances of, “Nurse’s Song,” the same amount of time passes.
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Of course, the physical body would always be in the present. But because Wordsworth believed the one’s imagination was so powerful, he did not find it outlandish to assume that spiritually, one could be as wholly in the past as they were in the present. Turning, once again, to “Nurse’s Song,” in Blake’s Songs of Experience helps to solidify the romantic notion that time was pliable. During her narration, the nurse returns to a past experience and produces an emotional response to it in the present. “The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind, / My face turns green and pale.” (3-4). This example also reveals how one can blur the lines of time when poetic genius is taken into account. This idea of the malleability of time was especially important to romantic poets, because they saw it as a way of escape. For them, and for those who believed in the ideals of the romantics, retreating into one’s mind to an earlier time was comforting. An example of this can be seen in, “Tintern Abbey.”
To them [memories] I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the
Of course, the physical body would always be in the present. But because Wordsworth believed the one’s imagination was so powerful, he did not find it outlandish to assume that spiritually, one could be as wholly in the past as they were in the present. Turning, once again, to “Nurse’s Song,” in Blake’s Songs of Experience helps to solidify the romantic notion that time was pliable. During her narration, the nurse returns to a past experience and produces an emotional response to it in the present. “The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind, / My face turns green and pale.” (3-4). This example also reveals how one can blur the lines of time when poetic genius is taken into account. This idea of the malleability of time was especially important to romantic poets, because they saw it as a way of escape. For them, and for those who believed in the ideals of the romantics, retreating into one’s mind to an earlier time was comforting. An example of this can be seen in, “Tintern Abbey.”
To them [memories] I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the