Frustration and Despair in Walter Raleigh’s Poetry

الملخص

    In spite of the fact that most of the anthologies of English literature classify Raleigh as a minor poet, yet he wrote a kind of poetry that only prominent poets were able to write. He wrote a kind of reflective and introspective poetry which reflects his changing life, his rise to power and his downfall. His poetry, marked by melancholy and despair, was not in harmony with the common mood and the spirit of the age. Though the Elizabethan poetry was marked by the beauty of form and content and the love of life, Walter Raleigh’s poetry presented an opposite attitude through its rejection of life, frustration and despair. Most of his poetry is characterized by frustration and melancholy which were caused by many reasons some were personal and others were related to his connection with the court. What survived of his poetry were about fifty poems. The majority of those melancholic poems were written in prison; this justifies the melancholic tone that characterizes them.