Based on your reading of Leopold Cedar Senghor, Night of Sine?? please answer What is Negritude movement? What does it symbolize? How did the negritude movem

ROMANTICISM POETRY

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud 

By  WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

‘The World is too much with us’

By William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for every thing, we are out of tune; It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Further Reading

“To Sleep” (1816)

John Keats

O soft embalmer of the still midnight, Shutting, with careful fingers and benign, Our gloom-pleas’d eyes, embower’d from the light, Enshaded in forgetfulness divine: O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes, Or wait the “Amen,” ere thy poppy throws Around my bed its lulling charities. Then save me, or the passed day will shine Upon my pillow, breeding many woes,— Save me from curious Conscience, that still lords Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole; Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.

As much a hymn as anything else, this poem concerns a longing to escape sadness in sleep. For Keats, sleep becomes a snapshot of death, which he approaches with conflicting fear and desire. Is it a plea to God for a speedy death, or a statement of frustration that only God can control Keats’ life? The complex philosophical idea, rendered so beautifully in tight, syllabic verse, earns “To Sleep” a position high on the list. ( 10 Greatest Poems by John Keats | Society of Classical Poets)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

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NEGRITUDE POEMS

“ Night Of Sine”

Woman, put on my forehead your balsam hands, your hands softer than fur. Up there, the tall palm trees swinging in the night breeze rustle hardly. Not even the nurse’s song. Let the rhythmic silence rock us. Let’s listen to its song, let’s listen to the beating of our dark blood, let’s listen To the beating-of the dark pulse of Africa in the mist of lost villages. Look how the tired moon sinks towards its bed of slack water. Look how the burst of laughter doze off, and even the bards themselves dandle their heads like children on the backs of their mother. Look how the feet of the dancers grow heavy, as well as the tongue of the alternating chorus. This is the hour of the stars and of the Night that dreams reclining on that range of clouds, draped in its long gown of milk. The roofs of the huts gleam gently. What are they so confidently telling to the stars? Inside, the hearth extinguishes in the intimacy of bitter and sweet scents. Woman, light the lamp of butterclear oil, let the Ancesters, like their parents, talk the children in bed. Let’s listen to the voice of the Ancients of Elissa. Exiled as we are they did not want to die, their seminal flood is lost in the sand. Let me hear, in the smoky which I visit, a reflection of propitious souls Let my head on your breast, warm as a dang taken from the fire and smoking. Let me inhale the smell of our Dead, let me collect and repeat their living voice, let me learn To live before I sink, deeper than the diver, into the lofty depth of sleep.

“ Black Woman”

Naked woman, black woman Clothed with your colour which is life, with your form which is beauty! In your shadow I have grown up; the gentleness of your hands was laid over my eyes. And now, high up on the sun-baked pass, at the heart of summer, at the heart of noon, I come upon you, my Promised Land, And your beauty strikes me to the heart like the flash of an eagle. Naked woman, dark woman Firm-fleshed ripe fruit, sombre raptures of black wine, mouth making lyrical my mouth Savannah stretching to clear horizons, savannah shuddering beneath the East Wind's eager caresses

“ Prayer To Masks”

Masks! Oh Masks! Black mask, red mask, you black and white masks, Rectangular masks through whom the spirit breathes, I greet you in silence! And you too, my panterheaded ancestor. You guard this place, that is closed to any feminine laughter, to any mortal smile. You purify the air of eternity, here where I breathe the air of my fathers. Masks of maskless faces, free from dimples and wrinkles. You have composed this image, this my face that bends over the altar of white paper. In the name of your image, listen to me! Now while the Africa of despotism is dying – it is the agony of a pitiable princess, Just like Europe to whom she is connected through the naval. Now turn your immobile eyes towards your children who have been called And who sacrifice their lives like the poor man his last garment So that hereafter we may cry ‘here’ at the rebirth of the world being the leaven that the white flour needs. For who else would teach rhythm to the world that has died of machines and cannons? For who else should ejaculate the cry of joy, that arouses the dead and the wise in a new dawn? Say, who else could return the memory of life to men with a torn hope? They call us cotton heads, and coffee men, and oily men. They call us men of death. But we are the men of the dance whose feet only gain power when they beat the hard soil.