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Gothic poetry belongs to the tradition of Gothic literature that peaked during the 18th century, overlapping with Romanticism. Both literary genres explore the depth of human emotions, nature’s power, and otherworldy realms; however, while Romanticism looks at things optimistically and explores the sublimity of ethereal realms through nature’s power, the Gothic perspective is pessimistic and explores eerie supernatural realms, dark symbolism of nature and its elements. Notably, major Romantic poets like Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, Blake, and Keats are known for their Gothic poetry.
Gothic poetry has an aesthetic appeal and deftly uses its setting to convey its central concerns like death, decay, suffering, sin, madness, dark human emotions and desires, creepy possessive passion, and intense, often unrequited love while focusing on emotions like fear, despair, horror, melancholy, obsession, etc.
It is characterized by a supernatural atmosphere created by sinister forces like ghosts, eerie creatures, evil characters, uncanny events, etc., creating a mysterious and suspenseful narrative. It also uses macabre imagery and often conveys the grotesque and morbid realities of existence.
It employs rich symbolism to create a proleptic foreboding aura, such as nature’s elements like dark nights, thick forests, full moon, stars, winds, crows, ravens, owls, and other things, including graveyards, haunted castles, nightmares, etc.
The Gothic genre also overlaps with the 18th-century Dark Romanticism that peaked in America with Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, etc., rooted in psychological and philosophical understandings of the dark side of human nature and ensuing moral ambiguities.
Coleridge’s ‘Christabel’ is an uncompleted long narrative that tells the story of Christabel and Geraldine, featuring supernatural elements.
'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,
And the owls have awakened the crowing cock;
Tu—whit! Tu—whoo!
And hark, again! the crowing cock,
‘The Raven’ by Edgar Allan Poe presents an eerie raven who incessantly knocks over the speaker’s door and says only one word – “Nevermore.”
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
Shelley’s ‘The cold earth slept below’ paints a freezing winter night where the speaker discovers his beloved’s cold body.
The cold earth slept below;
Above the cold sky shone;
And all around,
With a chilling sound,
‘Annabel Lee’ by Edgar Allan Poe is a lyrical narrative ballad about a man haunted by his lost lover, Annabel Lee.
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a lyrical ballad narrated by an old sailor about a mysterious sea journey.
He holds him with his glittering eye—
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years' child:
The Mariner hath his will.
Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’ describes the poet’s dream of visiting the palace of a Mongol emperor who ruled the ancient Chinese Yuan Dynasty.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
In Yeats’ ‘He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead,’ the speaker yearns for the death of his beloved to be together as he wishes.
Were you but lying cold and dead,
And lights were paling out of the West,
You would come hither, and bend your head,
And I would lay my head on your breast;
‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ by John Keats is an intriguing narrative that explores death, decay, and love with a supernatural aura.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
‘The Sick Rose’ by William Blake describes the loss of a woman’s virginity through the metaphor of a rose and an invisible worm.
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
‘Porphyria’s Lover,’ opens up with a classic setting of a stormy evening. It is a story of a deranged and lovesick man.
The rain set early in to-night,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
Charles Baudelaire’s ‘A Carcass’ intertwines beauty and decay, startling the readers through graphic imagery.
My love, do you recall the object which we saw,
That fair, sweet, summer morn!
At a turn in the path a foul carcass
On a gravel strewn bed,
‘Mariana’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson, drawing from a Shakespearean play, depicts the sorrow of a lonely woman abandoned by her lover.
With blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
‘Spirits of the Dead’ by Edgar Allan Poe is a beautiful poem that describes life and death. Specifically, the poet dwells on what it means to move from one world to the next.
Thy soul shall find itself alone
'Mid dark thoughts of the grey tombstone;
Not one, of all the crowd, to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy.
‘The Bells’ by Edgar Allan Poe is a musical poem. In it, the poet depicts the various sounds bells make and the events they symbolize.
Hear the sledges with the bells—
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market,’ narrates the fantastical tale of Laura and Lizzie, delving into sin, redemption, and sisterhood.
Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
“Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
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