While the birth of the Romantic movement is associated with the French Enlightenment philosopher Rousseau's novel, The New Heloisie, Romanticism had a distinct spirit of anti-rationality, mysticism, and belief in the spiritual realm that neo-Classical Enlightenment philosophy lacked, although there was a great deal of cross-pollination between the two ideologies at first. "The Enlightenment believed in the unity of all humanity, in the universal rights of men, and the uniformity, if not the equality of all rational beings" (Cranston 22)
With age, he discovers a haunting memory that did not exist before. Changes seems to be everywhere when he writes, "The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, / Their colours and their forms, were then to me / An appetite; a feeling and a love" (Wordsworth 78-80)
The song stimulates his mind and it makes him consider things otherworldly. The poet says the song makes his heart "ache" (Keats 1) and his it numbs his wits
In "Ode to the West Wind," Percy Shelley demonstrates characteristics of the Romantic Period because he, too, is reaching for an otherworldly experience. The poet begins with personifying autumn by becoming aware of its "being" (Shelley 1)