214 The Poetry of Mary Robinsonantagonist is a successful farmer jealous of even the tiniest piece of
his property while Robinson’s is an arrogant aristocrat on a power
trip: where young Harry Gill begrudges Goody Blake a few sticks
of firewood from his hedge, the “Lord of the Castle” in Robinson’s
poem simply “hated that poverty should be so cheerful” (2: 34; 35).
Robinson’s poem obviates a dramatic encounter between the two by
having the Lord send Mary “all trembling, to prison away,” where
she dies “broken- hearted” (40–1). As the community mourns the
beloved old woman, the lord is driven mad by the “terrible song” of
avenging screech owls; and after wasting away in a manner like that
of Harry Gill, he, unlike Harry, dies at the end of the poem but with-
out anyone shedding a tear on his “tomb of rich marble” (54, 64).
Thus, both poems explore the guilty consciences of the villains and
the psychological manifestations of that guilt, although Robinson’s
poem denies the old woman any agency in this; Goody Blake utters a
curse that at least plants the seed of guilt in the conscience of Harry
Gill. What about the “matter” of Robinson’s poem Coleridge appre-
ciated is unclear, except that, given his friendship with Robinson at
the time, the vindictive finality of its villain’s punishment may have
afforded him some amusement, feeling as he must have done for
Robinson’s impoverished circumstances and reading the Lord of the
Castle allegorically as the Prince of Wales.
Robinson, although likely inf luenced by Wordsworth’s poem, is
not wholly imitative. The meter of “The Poor Singing Dame” echoes
that of “Goody Blake and Harry Gill” but in such a way as to high-
light its own deviations. In the preface to Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth
remarks that the tale of “Goody Blake and Harry Gill” is narrated “in
a more impressive metre than is usual in Ballads” (408). But this is
not a metrical contest with the ballad; it is an experiment in the nar-
rative mode, in the way he is able to tell a story to a reader or listener.
As Brennan O’Donnell explains, “An important element in the con-
ception of the poem was his choice to frame a rude ballad- narrative
in a meter that the sensitive reader would feel to be more impressive
than usual in the genre” (63). It is significant, moreover, that this
metrical experiment follows, in Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth’s “The
Female Vagrant,” written in Spenserian stanzas, making a stark con-
trast. The “impressive metre” of “Goody Blake and Harry Gill” is an
eight- line stanza of short four- beat lines, with an augmented, or femi-
nine, rhyme, indicated with an underscored space, in the first and
third lines: a_ba_bcdcd 4. In addition to these features, Wordsworth
is also primarily counting stresses with an irregular number of total
syllables per line. This allows him to perform occasional exceptional9780230100251_07_ch05.indd 2149780230100251_07_ch05.indd 214 12/28/2010 11:09:04 AM12/28/2010 11:09:04 AM
10.1057/9780230118034 - The Poetry of Mary Robinson, Daniel RobinsonCopyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket iTr
omso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-13