Poe once wrote that all worldly things contain "the germ of their inevitable annihilation." Pretty cheerful stuff -- clearly this was a man obsessed with ruin and with death. His characters typically suffer from various forms of mental and physical deterioration; their minds seem to have a predilecti

Anxiety, Dark, Death, Gothic fiction, Grotesque, Intense, Lyrical, Sublime, Symbolist poetry, Violent

Contemplative, Intense, Pathos, Romantic literature, Romantic poetry, Self-reflection, Sturm und drang (storm and stress), Sublime

Some works of art effortlessly draw the core of their subject to surface. William Blake, the great predecessor to the Romantics, understood this well. Whether in a lyrical, allegorical poem like "The Echoing Green" or in the almost futuristic engravings for "The Book of Urizen," he exemplified the ar

18th century poetry, Lyrical, Pathos, Sensual, Sublime

As Anglo-Irish tensions tore his country apart, William Butler Yeats sought to give Ireland songs of identity rooted in the island's particular history and myth. Invoking a strong sense of place and folk tradition, Yeats attempted to counter the rapid growth of industry and materialism that he saw as

Lyrical, Modernist poetry, Mythic, Rebel, Sublime, Tragic