The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

Bell’s Laureates II 99

Two years later, however, after the September Massacres in Paris, Laura

Maria presents a very different perspective on events in France. On 20

September 1792, Robinson published in the Oracle a new ode, “Ode

to Humanity,” with the Laura Maria avatar. As the title suggests, the

poem is a paean to humane pacifism, but it opens in the patriotic

manner of a Laureate ode, celebrating a still- peaceful Britain on the

verge of war. Laura Maria praises her country’s “calm majestic pride,”

Britain’s “conqu’ring NAVIES,” and the supremacy of British “ART and

COMMERCE” (1: 181; 5–7). Laura Maria calls for “blest Humanity” to

“Bathe with oblivious balm, the dread record, / Grav’d on the page

of Fame by Gallia’s vengeful sword!” (1: 182; 33, 43–4). Expressing

Laura Maria’s horror, the poem’s imagery is apocalyptic in its portrayal

of revolutionary Paris:

Where the tow’ring CITY stands,

Once a polish’d Nation’s pride,

See, stern DEATH, with rapid stride,

Leads on his grisly bands!

The Infant’s shriek, the Sire’s despair,

Rend the sulphur- stagnant air;

Nought illumes the direfulb shade,

Save the poignard’s glitt’ring blade;

All along the f linty way,

See the tepid R iver stray,

Foaming – blushing, as it f lows,

While ev’ry Dome resounds with agonizing woes! (1: 183; 69–80)

Although similarly allegorical, “Ode to Humanity” is formally dif-

ferent from Robinson’s previous Laura Maria odes. Obviously, the

imagery is more literally terrific, but it is in some ways a disavowal

of her previous mode and its associations. Robinson constructs a

generally homostrophic ode, with some variations: the opening

and closing stanzas are both eight lines, and the six intervening

stanzas are each twelve lines, but all of the stanzas reveal varying

rhyme schemes and syllabic counts. The overall regularity allows

for Robinson to create a greater sense of chaos within the stanzaic

matrix. Every stanza, however, ends with an Alexandrine, thus giv-

ing each a roughly Spenserian quality. Robinson clearly is inter-

ested in establishing a formal regularity that she can then subvert

and finally disrupt. In addition, Robinson eschews the Franco-

formal syllabics she and Merry had practiced. Gifford likely had a

hand in this change; in the Baviad, he attacks the Della Cruscans

9780230100251_04_ch02.indd 999780230100251_04_ch02.indd 99 12/28/2010 11:08:30 AM12/28/2010 11:08:30 AM

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