Poetry cannot escape the poet. No art evades its artist for the two are forever joined; art is the subjective response of its creator. The beauty of this individualism releases the author to fashion his uniqueness on an empty canvas. The Romantics emphasized a similar kind of poetic individualism, an individualism that formed the foundation of their expression. Though their personal experience proved a necessity to their art, these poets also trusted in the universal nature of human experience. By writing their hearts, they allowed readers to enter into their souls, to live vicariously in their emotions. This conscientious individualism, one that focuses on self with a realization of the larger realm of human emotions, is particularly evident in the works of William Wordsworth and John Keats.

William Wordsworth dwelled in the pleasures of his own mind. Often found walking alone in his beautiful Lake District, Wordsworth loved the isolation and the beauty of nature. Many of his poems highlight his subjective response to the nature he discovered on his solitary walks. In his poem I wandered lonely as a cloud, Wordsworth describes a walk in which he came upon “A host, of golden daffodils” (4). He finds himself immediately elated, unable to be sad in such a pleasing atmosphere. The scene is tucked away in his mind and when he finds himself “in vacant or in pensive mood/ They flash upon that inward eye/ Which is the bliss of solitude” (20-22). His memory of the daffodils, found in the seclusion of his personal experience, inspires his poetry; it cheers his very soul. Wordsworth’s personal experiences, specifically ones known during times of solitude and reflection, energize his poetry, providing the very foundation for his great works.

Like Wordsworth, John Keats developed poetry based around his individual consciousness. Keats lived most of his life under the ominous presence of death, knowing that he would not live a long and prosperous life. His writings illustrate his absorption in his own thought and his inner struggle with the realization of what he knew would be a life interrupted. In his sonnet When I have fears that I may cease to be, Keats empties his soul on the page, describing his torment over what could happen if he were to live a longer life. The first section of the poem discusses his literary potential, fearing he will pass before he has emptied himself of his poems. He writes: “Before my pen has glen’d my teeming brain,/ Before high piled books, in charactry,/ Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain” (2-4). He continues, highlighting the “unreflecting love” (12) he fears he will not live to enjoy until, at the tragic end, “love and fame to nothingness do sink” (14). From the isolation of his situation, Keats is able to create a beautiful poem.

Yet beneath this individualism is a sense that all humans join together in the realm of emotion and experience. An understanding of this union enables the poet to write; indeed, according to Wordsworth, the poet is the only one that can truly write of human emotion. In his Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth describes the poet as “a man speaking to men…who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul…a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him” (269). The poet’s soul is enhanced so that he may share his passions amongst men. For this reason, Wordsworth emphasized the understandability of poetry. In his Preface he writes: “I proposed to myself in these poems…to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them…in [a language] really used by men” (264). Though Wordsworth’s poetry centered on his individual experience, he firmly held the value of poetry for all mankind. His philosophy of poetry praises the poet while upholding his purpose: to reach mankind.

Although not as explicit in Keats writing, this sense of the poet’s ability to reach others through an understanding and utilization of individualism is certainly implied. In On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer, Keats describes his individual response to an author’s work. After reading Chapman’s translation of Homer, Keats found a connection that he had not experienced before. He epitomizes the reader’s response anticipated in Wordsworth’s philosophy of poetic writing. The poem is full of rich imagery and metaphor comparing Keats to an explorer discovering something no one has seen before: “like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes/he star’d at the Pacific…Silent, upon a peak in Darien” (11,12,14). The magnitude of what his experience in the reading exposes both the author’s capacity to reach humanity and the reader’s eager reception.

The union of the poet and his poetry implies a sense of individualism integral to any literary work. William Wordsworth and John Keats firmly established their personal experience and thoughts in their writing yet they did so conscientiously, knowing that human beings all encounter the same emotions. They allow their readers to live vicariously in their minds, experiencing the wide range of emotions they bring to life in their poetry. This is the beauty of literature at its very core: individualism expressed in isolation yet reaching out to a universal audience.