The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

212 The Poetry of Mary Robinson

no connection, each is left alone. The thrust of the poem is not toward

the social and communal, as it could easily have been, but toward a

kind of maddening solipsism.

Robinson’s other ballad poems come closer to the accentual mea-

sures Coleridge achieves in “Christabel.” This practice of counting

beats in a rhythmic matrix is more evident in “The Lady of the Black

Tower,” one of Robinson’s most compelling poems. It opens with a

disembodied voice, calling to the unnamed lady of the title, suggest-

ing perhaps an unconscious voice telling her what she already knows

deep inside her, what indeed she most fears to be true:

Watch no more the twinkling stars;

Watch no more the chalky bourne;

Lady! from the holy wars,

Never will thy love return!

Cease to watch, and cease to mourn,

Thy lover never will return! (2: 210; 1–6)

The poem goes on to depict the lady’s vision of her lover’s corpse, her

dispute with some barefoot monks, her encounter with a skeleton-

knight, her voyage to the Holy Land, culminating with her arrival at

a ghoulish banquet straight out of “Alonzo the Brave.” The stanza

enables Robinson to develop her slight but fantastic narrative with the

incantatory stanza that bit by bit, in discrete units, creates the dream-

like effect. The short stanzas enable Robinson to break the spell sud-

denly and neatly to conclude the poem when the sleeper awakes:

Just now the lady WOK E:—for she

Had slept upon the lofty tower,

And dreams of dreadful phantasie

Had fill’d the lonely moon- light hour:

Her pillow was the turret stone,

And on her breast the pale moon shone.

But now a real voice she hears:

It was her lover’s voice;—for he,

To calm her bosom’s rending fears,

That night had cross’d the stormy sea:

“I come,” said he, “from Palestine,

To prove myself, sweet Lady, THINE.” (2: 217; 2: 109–20)

The sudden waking consciousness continues over the course of two

s t a n z a s , w h e r e , a s Ja c q u e l i n e M. L a b b e p o i nt s o u t , “ r e a l it y a n d n a t u r e

reassert themselves” (Romantic Paradox 120). By establishing the

9780230100251_07_ch05.indd 2129780230100251_07_ch05.indd 212 12/28/2010 11:09:03 AM12/28/2010 11:09:03 AM

10.1057/9780230118034 - The Poetry of Mary Robinson, Daniel Robinson

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