Strike a Balance v/s Reason and Imagination.
What is more important, logic or creativity? It is difficult to tell. In Hong Kong, society usually blames the education system on making our children lack of creativity to invent and explore new things. However, the teaching of science and technology should be in the field of reason and logic. Contradiction seems to occur here. In fact, it was a topic long ago, since Romanticism in the late 18th century. Romanticists emphasis on "intuition, feeling, inspiration, and the genius of human creativity", in which contrast with the stress on human reason during the period of Revolution. In William Wordsworth The World is Too Much with Us, London, 1802, Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Kubla Khan, all these have transformations on the physical localities to show the dynamic impacts of Romanticism.
To start with, it is important for us to understand the meaning of "transforming the physical localities". Physical localities mean the setting of the poem, such as "Westminster Bridge", "London" and the natural environment. Usually, in a poem, some underlying meanings will be conveyed despite the description on the physical localities. Sometimes, some parts of the poem are focused on the physical environment, and change to talk about other feelings and meanings suddenly. And in Romanticism, poets usually imply the emphasis on creativity and imagination, their discontent towards the poor relationship between human and nature and even their admiration in the exotic world. Such changes on poems can be understood as "transforming the physical localities".
It is not difficult to find out lines of description on the physical environment solely and lines with another meanings within one poem. Description on environment, such as the reflection of "the moon"(5)1 onto the "[s]ea"(5)1, the "howling"(6) 1 of "[t]he winds"(6) 1, the "beauty of the morning"(4) 1 in a city and the palace in "Xanadu"(1) 2, can be found explicitly.
