The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems
Allston, Washington, 1779-1843Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019
Rating 2.9- Word count
- 88K words
- Chapters
- 9
Tags
English Originals Modern Poetry Seasonal CycleNatural ImageryNature ObservationPoetic FantasyAir SpiritsClassical VerseLyric StyleRomantic VerseAmerican PoetryMusical RhythmSummary
Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems by Washington AllstonAuthor: Allston, Washington, 1779-1843,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Feb 1, 2004Editor's review
This is a poetry collection by the American painter and poet Washington Allston, containing The Sylphs of the Season and other poems, a document of nineteenth-century American Romantic poetry. Allston is better known as a painter, and his verse is often associated with an interest in nature, imagination, and classical forms; the collection is useful for observing how a painter's eye enters poetic imagery. As a public-domain electronic edition, it suits research and appreciative reading rather than readers seeking plot or narrative excitement. Readers may attend to how sprites, seasons, and natural imagery are organized and compare the work with contemporary British and American Romantic poetry to understand its place and limitations.Who it's for
A good fit for
- Faculty and students of nineteenth-century American literature and Romantic poetry
- Readers interested in painter-poets and cross-artistic creation
- Poetry lovers who enjoy classical verse and slow, careful reading
- Editors and digital humanities practitioners curating public-domain poetic texts
Not a good fit for
- Readers who prefer plot-driven fiction or modern free verse
- Readers seeking a quick read without consulting background material
- Beginners unfamiliar with nineteenth-century English poetic forms
Reading tips
- Read the title poem The Sylphs of the Season first to grasp the collection's imagery.
- Read in groups by season or nature theme and note recurring images.
- Read several poems aloud to feel the rhythm of nineteenth-century English verse.
- Compare with contemporary British and American Romantic short poems and make brief stylistic notes.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
FAQ
Was Allston primarily a painter or a poet?
Sources indicate that Washington Allston (1779–1843) was both painter and poet, and this collection is his poetry. Readers may regard him as a cross-artistic creator and note whether painting experience shapes his nature description and imagery, but should not over-infer specific creative processes from this.Is this collection originally in English? How difficult is it?
The original is in English, nineteenth-century English poetry whose diction and syntax carry period features. Readers with university-level English can complete it with notes and a dictionary; those unfamiliar with classical verse should start with shorter poems and gradually adjust to the rhythm and allusions.Is it better for classroom excerpts or personal reading?
Both are possible. For classroom use, select the title poem and nature-themed short poems for close reading and discussion of imagery and rhythm; for personal reading, take it in small portions rather than insisting on reading the whole book, marking allusions first and returning to them after finishing a group of poems.This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.
About the author
Allston, Washington, 1779-1843 Author · American · 1779–1843Washington Allston (1779–1843) was an American painter and poet, regarded as a pioneer of American Romantic painting. Public information about him is limited, and his literary writing centers mainly on art and the imagination. His representative work Lectures on Art discusses, in prose, the relationship between painting and poetry, reflecting his effort to connect the visual arts with literature; The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems presents fanciful images of nature and myth in verse. Two of his works are held in this collection. His writing tends toward imagination and lyricism, with restrained language that often embeds aesthetic reflection in concrete imagery. As both painter and poet, his texts help illuminate early American Romantic ideas about art and build a bridge between art essays and poetry, exerting a certain influence on the later spread of Romantic tendencies in American art and literature.