Stuart’s Laureates II 221Coleridge would have appreciated in the poem—Robinson’s nonce
stanza is like the tide acting upon the beach, itself a liminal space, and
as such performs the subject of the poem.
“The Haunted Beach” is surely one of Robinson’s greatest techni-
cal achievements because its innovative form suits the strangeness of
the poem’s interests. Robinson here has moved beyond the romance
(gothic) ballad toward something more like Poe’s “Ulalume.” She
is perfecting a lyric of the subconscious that Coleridge, having
already composed “Kubla Khan,” surely would have recognized as
coming from similarly dark and unexplored recesses—the “caverns
measureless to man.” In recognizing something strange and new in
Robinson’s poem, Coleridge clearly admires the way that her mas-
tery of poetic form enables that “willing suspension of disbelief” that
he believed necessary for appreciating surreal or supernatural poetry.
His complaint that the poem “wants Tale” may have been a rhetori-
cal ploy to obviate criticism from the narrative- minded Southey. As
Tim Fulford puts it, “In appreciating Robinson’s music Coleridge
was paying tribute to an ability which he understood to be more than
merely technical” (“Abyssinian Maid” 18). But as with his remarks on
the pleasure he took in reading Robinson’s poetry, Coleridge did find
it difficult to define exactly what that ability was and how it achieved
its impact.
Like Coleridge, Wordsworth, too, recognized an exciting innova-
tion in Robinson’s poem “The Haunted Beach” and employed her
nonce stanza for his poem “The Solitude of Binnorie,” published in
the Morning Post on 14 October 1800. Coleridge sent Wordsworth’s
poem to Stuart with the following headnote, including a sop to
Southey:It would be unpardonable in the author of the following lines, if he
omitted to acknowledge that the metre (with exception of the bur-
then) is borrowed from “The Haunted Beach of Mrs. ROBINSON;” a
most exquisite Poem, first given to the public, if I recollect aright, in
your paper, and since then re- published in the second volume of Mr.
SOUTHEY’S Annual Anthology. This acknowledgment will not appear
superf luous to those who have felt the bewitching effect of that abso-
lutely original stanza in the original Poem, and who call to mind that
the invention of a metre has so widely diffused the name of Sappho,
and almost constitutes the present celebrity of Alcæus. (14 October
1800)These remarks are significant for several reasons, not the least of which
is that they presume on the part of the paper’s readers a familiarity9780230100251_07_ch05.indd 2219780230100251_07_ch05.indd 221 12/28/2010 11:09:05 AM12/28/2010 11:09:05 AM
10.1057/9780230118034 - The Poetry of Mary Robinson, Daniel RobinsonCopyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket iTr
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