Enlightenment and Romanticism

A Poem by Austin

A few scattered thoughts about their relationship- I wanted to get them down and somewhat collected.

I am a believer in both enlightenment and romanticism.
I find that logic both governs and yield to emotion,
And I believe a balance does exist between those two terms.
The nature of humanity and the human brain is to place barriers between comfort and its opposite.
The nature of society is to spurn any who attempt to demonstrate a welling of emotion as defying the norm and thus as dramatics.
Yet a heart and a soul can never be so satisfied as to yield to these natural laws.
Emotions are both present by human condition and are things of beauty.
They are often by their keepers disregarded or despised, hated as wretched occurrences of toil.
But perhaps they are to be embraced.
Yet, it is true that raw display of emotion can be not only overwhelming, but also disconcerting.
So where lays the happy medium?
The answer is simpler than the solution.
To know how to express emotion, one must first learn how to express passion,
For the only component never absent from raw emotion is passion itself.
The passionate expression of passion itself can cross the boundaries of the mind and of society.
There must be a method to the madness, filled with reason and understanding, which are, in turn, the passions of the mind.
This is why I believe firmly in both enlightenment and romanticism.
Not only can they coexist, but they must.
And each individual is a ship upon the waters riddled by this tempest
Until he finds his understanding, and, thus, his inner tranquility.