The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

100 The Poetry of Mary Robinson

for their pretentious adoption of a popularized notion of Edward

Bysshe’s Art of Poetry (1701), which encouraged syllabic meters for

English poetry on the continental model and asserted that clas-

sical prosody, which scans long and short syllables, was faulty for

English composition.^17 In the eyes (and ears) of classicists, such as

Gifford, this gave license to many poets and poetasters: as Gifford

writes, “Happy the soil where bards like mushrooms rise, / And

ask no culture but what Bysche [sic] supplies!” (177–8). In “Ode

to Humanity,” Robinson is engaged in the Anglophonic poetic

practice of counting stresses, resulting in many initially truncated

(acephalectic) lines with an almost trochaic feel. Although seven-

syllable lines frequently suggest syllabic verse, the inconsistent

interplay between seven- and eight- syllable lines in the poem, com-

bined with the regularity of four beats in each, tells me she is writ-

ing accentual verse. So, in the stanza graph that follows, I measure

the beats per line, but assume a generally iambic foot pattern, par-

ticularly in the longer lines:

1–8: abcaddc 4 b 6

9–20: abbaccddeff 4 e 6

21–32: aabccbddeef 4 f 6

33–44: aabbccddeef 5 f 6

45–56: aabccbdedef 5 f 6

57–68: aabbccdedef 5 f 6

69–80: abbaccddeef 4 f 6

81– 88: aabbccd 4 d 6

Clearly, one of Robinson’s formal principles is that each stanza must

be unique, while also giving the impression of general regularity. In

a less subtle way, the poem also renounces Merry’s Laurel of Liberty.

The laurel Merry celebrates reappears in “Ode to Humanity” in ever-

increasing states of moribundity, until finally Robinson shows that

France is “where the blood- stain’d Laurel dies” (1: 183; 87). Dated

17 September 1792, Robinson’s Laura Maria hopes that in its place

the “OLIVE” will “bloom” (88). In this way, the poem is peculiarly

also about fame and about infamy—British fame and French infamy.

Moreover, given the publicity of Laura Maria’s connection to Della

Crusca, the ode also is a kind of elegy for the English laureate of the

French Revolution—Merry.

Laura Maria does not make another appearance in the Oracle

until after the execution of Louis XVI, which took place on 21

January 1793. On 1 February, France declared war on the latest

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

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