The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

102 The Poetry of Mary Robinson

in REGAL blood” (1: 83; 276; 192; 46–7). Meanwhile, Robinson

recognizes the imminent fall of the Girondists: “Patriot VIRTUE

sinks beneath the whelming flood” (48).

Laura Maria only brief ly imagines the consciousness of the King

himself. Poignantly, the King “Pants for the Morning’s purple glow—

/ The Purple Glow that cheers his breast” (59–60). The cheerfulness

of the sunrise, with the pun on purple and its associations of regal or

exalted birth, as well as the impending spilling of the King’s blood,

is appropriately conf licted. With the image of the sunrise, now Laura

Maria can fully envision the grief and terror of the King’s family, his

children, “the infant Victims,” and his Queen:

When will the vivifying ORB,

The tears of widow’d Love absorb?

SEE! SEE! the palpitating breast,

By all the Weeping Graces drest,

Now dumb with grief – now raving wild,

Bending o’er each with’ring Child,

The ONLY Treasures spar’d by savage Ire,

The fading SHADOWS of their MURDER’D SIRE! (192–3; 65–72)

Louis himself remains inaccessible, while Robinson’s Laura Maria

humanizes Marie Antoinette as his widow and mother of his chil-

dren. At this image, the poem deliberately falters as the poet’s imagi-

nation cannot bear its own imagery: “Oh! FANCY, spread thy pow’rful

wing, / From HELL’S polluted confines spring” (1: 193; 73–4). The

poem cannot even imagine the King going to meet his doom, but

it can envisage the “RUTHLESS FIENDS” who “triumph in the Deed

accurs’d!” (77–8). The poem, thus, is not a fragment in any for-

mal sense: it is only a glimpse, its imagery working as synecdoche

for the course of the Revolution. The poem closes with images of

obfuscation:

See, her veil OBLIVION throws

O’er the last of Human Woes;

The ROYAL STOLE, with many a crimson stain,

Closes from every eye the scene of pain.... (79–82)

Although Laura Maria refuses to see the King’s death, she hears “the

WAR SONG” that “drowns the dying groan, WHICH ANGELS WEEP TO

HEAR!” (83–4). She can imagine heavenly remorse for the death of

the King, not necessarily the start of the war. The poem concludes,

therefore, with regret that the war has begun, but it places culpability

9780230100251_04_ch02.indd 1029780230100251_04_ch02.indd 102 12/28/2010 11:08:31 AM12/28/2010 11:08:31 AM

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

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