This was written for the Romantic Essay Blue Book exam for Mrs. Roehl.  I don't remember the question.
 

    "'Why look'st thou so?' - 'With my crossbow/ I shot the Albatross!'"  Those few lines from Colerige's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner sum up the Romanic Period, or at least 1/15 of the period.  Night and death were subjects that continually filled 1/15 of the Romantics' minds, from Colerige to Black to Gray and even Wordsworth.  Underneath the innate goodness, Romantics thought of belief in nature as a source of inspiration for death, Belief in democracy in dealing out death, Belief in the preeminence of the imagination and the emotions of death and Belief in the simplicity and naturalness of death.

    The death of the albatross caters to Colerige's purpose: to show death.  An evil witch steals the soul of all the mariner's shipmates and they fall to the deck as soulless bodies.  Colerige implies death-like diseases in his descriptive language - "Her skin was a white as leprosy."  Not only was he fascinated with death, he expressively used diseases in his poems.  Colerige speaks of the grim reaper - Death itself as it is encountered upon the ship.  "The naked hulk alongside came."  This can be taken as a man, such as The Incredible Hulk, but it merely represents death.  Once the Albatross leaves the Mariner, his death is postponed.

    Blake is fascinated with death, as seen in his famous Songs of Experience and Songs of Innocence.  "Tiger, tiger burning bright/ in the forest of the night" shows how scary the night, representing death is.  The poem is filled with images of fires and savage chains designed to hold and break (and possibly kill) the reader (or at least scare him or her out of his or her mind).  The Songs of Innocence are usually contrasted with the Songs of Experience, but when examined according to the 12th romantic standard (by Mrs. Roehl's "this is what the critics made" list) a comparison might be made.  The lamb, who is young, free and innocent represents death; for until death takes hold of a man, he is innocent and unaware of its true power.  Blake was definitely a death writer.

    Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Courtyard" is a plesant story of death, or the thoughts of an outsider (an alive person) on DEATH!  Gray sits looking at the tombstones and muses on life or activities done after death.  He dreams of the other-worldly power playing with and dealing with the identities of the dead (at least dead on our world).  He laments, repents and resents the fact that people are all in the same situation when they die (of course, they are dead).  Gray has a poem in which he fantasizes on the afterlife.

    William Wordsworth, of the First Generation Romantics, on the surface has not torture-death poetry, but more die while sleeping-peaceful death motive.  In his "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above A Tintern Abbey," Wordsworth speaks largely of the nature and landscape of the Abbey and surrounding territory.  "...and again I hear/ These waters, rolling from their mountain springs/ With a soft inland murmer."  With this scenery, he speaks of the peacefulness and beauty of heaven - how the mountain springs are clear up above and life (or afterlife is good).  "While here I stand, not only the sense/ Of present pleasure, but with the pleasing thoughts/ That in this moment there is life and food/ For future years."  Wordsworth believes by the time he is dead, he will make a difference for future generations.  Also his "A Slumber did my Spirit Steal" of the Lucy poems speaks of Spirits and Death.  "She seemed a thing that could not feel/ The touch of earthly years."  Wordsworth elevates Lucy to a position beyond death and therefor bypassing the loss at death.  Wordsworth's pems have an undercurrent of death.

    The equations of the Romantic period should be Romantics x 1/15 = Death.  Pulled back in these terms, Death is seen by all Romantics, and Romantics write of death.  This ranges from the lesser, peaceful theme of death with Wordsworth and Gray to the hard core DEATH with Colerige and Blake.  Death was with the Romantics, and though they are dead, Death will Never DIE!!!
 

    William Chen