Ruins and Relics of the Ancient Past in Romanticism
The Romantics loved to brood.
They liked to sit, hunched over, clothes all disheveled, chin on hand, frowning, and thinking about Time. How quickly it goes by, how mysterious it is. Got that picture in your head? So yeah, it's not surprising that these guys loved them some ruins.
There's nothing the Romantics loved more than a crumbling building or an excavated vase from who knows how long ago. They loved sitting there and thinking about how these fragments from the past could tell us something about our own times…or tell us nothing at all, except that man, life is short, y'all.
Romantics were especially obsessed with Greek and Roman ruins. That's why a bunch of Romantics traveled to Greece and Italy—sites of these two ancient civilizations. Three of the most famous Romantics (John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron) died in these two countries. Yeah, it's fitting.
Chew on This
So how do ancient relics and ruins inspire the Romantic poets? Look at these quotations from John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" to see how an old Greek urn gives the poet all kinds of interesting things to think about.
Check out how a ruined statue in the desert leads to reflections on transience, power, and ambition in Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ozymandias."