222 The Poetry of Mary Robinsonwith prosody and poetic form. Coleridge is quick to point out that
Wordsworth’s poem borrows Robinson’s “Haunted Beach” stanza
“with the exception of the burthen,” or refrain; obviously, the line
t hat ends each of Wordswort h’s stanzas is “The Solitude of Binnorie,”
not “Where the green billows play’d.” But this is not what Coleridge
means to point out: instead, he is anticipating a reader’s recognition
that the accents in each of the two poems’ refrains occur in different
syllabic positions. In every other respect, Wordsworth has matched
Robinson syllable for syllable, rhyme for rhyme. Coleridge also means
to remind readers of “the bewitching effect of that absolutely origi-
nal stanza in the original Poem,” again testifying to the ineffable
pleasure Robinson’s formal ebullience and innovation affords. And,
most important, Coleridge attributes Robinson with “the invention
of a meter,” the establishment of a nonce form that promises fame to
its creator in subsequent performances of that form by other poets:
Wordsworth has demonstrated his poetical skill by attending to the
rigors of Robinson’s original form. Coleridge’s subsequent point is
that Robinson, “the English Sappho,” has created a form that may
become, like the original Sappho’s, eponymous.
Coleridge’s reference to Sappho and Alcæus has resulted in some
confusion. Because Coleridge did give one of Wordsworth’s poems
the title “Alcæus to Sappho,” some readers have taken his reference to
Sappho and Alcæus as another sign of his erotic interest in Robinson.
According to legend, Sappho and Alcæus were lovers; at the very least
they were contemporaries living on the isle of Lesbos and suppos-
edly exchanged poems with each other. Coleridge did write “The
Apotheosis; or The Snow- Drop,” a poetic tribute to Robinson, almost
three years earlier; but he had yet to write “A Stranger Minstrel,”
a response to Robinson’s “Ode, Inscribed to the Infant Son of S.
T. Coleridge, Esq.,” which appeared three days after Wordsworth’s
“Solitude of Binnorie” and Coleridge’s headnote. It is almost a coin-
cidence that he mentions Sappho and Alcæus here, because he is abso-
lutely not referring to Robinson and himself as analogous figures.
Certainly, Coleridge could not mention Sappho without intending
an allusion to Robinson’s sobriquet, but he is literally referring to
the eponymous forms associated with the two Greek poets, noting
that Alcæus’s poetry is not as widely read as Sappho’s and so he is
known more for his quatrain than for any of his poems. He does
mean to pay tribute to Robinson’s invention by reminding readers
of the eponymous Greek stanzas attributed to those two poets: the
quatrain known as Alcaics, most famously employed by Tennyson in
his poem “Milton”; and the quatrain known as Sapphics, notoriously9780230100251_07_ch05.indd 2229780230100251_07_ch05.indd 222 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
omso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-13