A feeling of mystery, excitement and remoteness away from everyday life is one of the descriptions for the word Romantic. The Romantic imagination is the vision of the poet to see the world from an entirely different perspective: The faculty which has been blunted by the coldness of reason is sought to be recaptured by the poet or the seer’s imagination.
The term Romantic imagination is often used to describe a group of poets starting with Blake and followed by Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats, Byron and Shelley. In the English Literature canon the word Romantic is often used to distinguish this group of poets from the era preceding them which had a pronounced tilt towards classicism, reason,sentiment and judgement. William Blake one of the most rigorous of the Romantics says “One power alone makes a poet: Imagination, The Divine vision” The Romantics were concerned with things of the spirit and pursued their inquiry through inspired insight and imagination.
What is imagination without excitement, awe and wonder? Without an inspired imaginative vision it is not possible to write lines like this and I quote
“Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the Earth
Wandering companionless among the stars that have a different birth”