Movement Description: Romanticism began in the 1700s and is known as one the biggest poetry movements in history. Romanticism was inspired by folklore in the eighteenth century with the work of Brothers Grimm, reactions against neoclassicism and a rivalry against the Augustan poets in England, and political events that fostered nationalistic pride. The best known Romantic poets were William Blake, William Wordsmith, Samuel T. Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and John Keats.
Poem Analysis: In this poem the Grave and the Rose are capitalized. The Grave can be seen as an assistant to Death, and the Rose a handmaiden to Love. In the first three lines the Grave wants to know how new love (dews of dawn), is doing and if it will last. The Rose answers with a question and asks how the deceased are doing and if their souls have passed on. The Rose answers in lines 5-8 that that new love is sometime comes from dark places and is strange, but is still sweet joyful all the same. The Grave answers the Rose question by explaining that death is stranger than love because it is unnatural and that after its transition the soul will become a new angel of God.
Literary Devices: Diction is used in the poem in the fifth line when hugo uses whereon, which means on what/thing or place and doth. Doth is defined as a third person singular present tense of "do".