Some notes about the Romantic lyric

Professor M. H. Abrams of Cornell University suggests that many lyrics (especially the longer ones) from the Romantic poets follow a certain pattern in their structure.  In his essay, "Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric" Abrams says that in each:

"[t]he speaker begins with a description of the landscape; an aspect or change of aspect in the landscape evokes a varied but integral process of memory, thought, anticipation, and feeling which remains closely intervolved with the outer scene. In the course of this meditation the lyric speaker achieves an insight, faces up to a tragic loss, comes to a moral decision, or resolves an emotional problem. Often the poem rounds upon itself to end where it began, at the outer scene, but with an altered mood and deepened understanding which is the result of the intervening meditation."

In outline form, the three stages look like this:

I. Description of the scene

II. Analysis of scene's significance with regard to the problem that troubles the poet

III. Affective resolution of the problem

This explanation might be better understood if we recognize three ways we come to know:

1. Cognitively: what is the poem about? What is happening to whom and where?

2. Affectively: how does the poem make me feel? What impressions do I get?

3. Contextually: how does this poem connect with me and my own experience? Is it believable? Is it meaningful? How does it compare to other poems I've read, or my knowledge of people, places, and history?

Perception of what is written is different for each reader, and even with each reading. Readers change, but the poem doesn't.