Stuart’s Laureates II 217and “Goody Blake and Harry Gill” have more complex narrative
and rhetorical interventions than most of the poems in Robinson’s
Lyrical Tales. Robinson’s collection, however, reveals considerably
more formal variety, and her formal choices demonstrate her char-
acteristic virtuosic performativity. Where Wordsworth’s stylistic
choices conform to his interest in keeping his reader “in the company
of f lesh and blood,” Robinson’s nonce forms do more than merely
“superadd the charm” of metrical language: they highlight the artis-
tic alterity of the poetic persona constructing them. In this way, we
might say Robinson’s “lyrical tales” are more superficial than most of
Wordsworth’s poems in Lyrical Ballads because, as he seeks stylisti-
cally to “descend” from the heights upon which he places the “Poet,”
Robinson’s poems literally perform their artifice in the strangeness
of their forms. In other words, they are highly self- conscious. The
“lyrical” modifier in the title of Robinson’s collection is her recogni-
tion of the formal experimentation in Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s
poems; in borrowing it, however, for a collection of poems with
wilder formal qualities than theirs, her title also pits her own formal
virtuosity against theirs. As always, for Robinson, style is substance.
Coleridge’s interest in Robinson’s “Jasper,” the unpublished poem
he provided for inclusion in Southey’s Annual Anthology, is primarily
stylistic. It is another supernatural metrical romance of guilt, mad-
ness, and isolation—and is undoubtedly the result of Robinson’s
reading of “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere.” Writing to Southey,
Coleridge explains, “This Poem I asked for you, because I thought
the metre stimulating— & some of the Stanzas really good—The f irst
line of the 12th would of itself redeem a worse Poem” (Letters 1: 562).
This remark suggests that Robinson shared the poem with Coleridge
during one of his social calls, perhaps recited it; Coleridge “asked”
for it of Robinson with the express purpose of giving it to Southey.
The line Coleridge admires is “Pale Moon! thou Spectre of the Sky!”
(2: 47; 56); it is reminiscent of the imagery of Coleridge’s “Ancyent
Marinere,” which no doubt inf luenced the meter of Robinson’s poem
as well. In this particular line, the accentual nature of the prosody
is striking, the four stresses falling on the first, second, fourth, and
eighth syllables, and again suggesting a connection between the two
poets’ approaches to meter and form. The “Jasper” stanza itself is a
five- line variation of the ballad stanza but with some rather unique
innovations, including internal rhyme within lines, indicated by
brackets: x 4 a_ 3 [bb] 4 [cc] 4 a_ 3. Like the ballad stanza, the first line
does not rhyme, but where in the ballad stanza, the unrhymed third
line matches the first, Robinson’s third line as well as her fourth9780230100251_07_ch05.indd 2179780230100251_07_ch05.indd 217 12/28/2010 11:09:04 AM12/28/2010 11:09:04 AM
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omso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-13