The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

Stuart’s Laureates II 241

Envoi

Robinson wanted thereby to earn the wreath of fame, but she did

not want the laurel reserved for a poetess because, as her treatment

of Sappho in Petrarchan sonnets demonstrates, it bears the taint of

the ephemeral and thus of mortality. Writing ambitious poetry in

difficult forms was always a way for Robinson to affirm her hold on

the poetic laurel and to steal for herself—not to borrow—the poetic

legitimacy that came more easily to male poets who, like Merry or

Coleridge, had certain educational and cultural advantages denied

to a woman such as herself. This is why, at the end of her life, in

her final year working for Stuart at the Morning Post, she had to

revive the Sappho avatar and to use it so doggedly in the assertion of

her cultural authority, as she does in the poem to Coleridge signed

“Sappho.” She also used the avatar to praise the Earl of Moira, who

may have assisted Robinson financially near the end of her life. On 3

Ju ly 1800, her poem “Sappho —To t he Ea rl of Moira” appea red in t he

Morning Post, just a few weeks after the Irish statesman had voted in

favor of union between Ireland and Great Britain. With this particu-

lar political and personal resonance, Robinson declares her Sappho

avatar to be “Britain’s Muse” and thus she specifically credentials her-

self to bestow upon her benefactor a share of her poetic immortality

(2: 97; 49). The composition of this poem would be the last time she

would write her ubiquitous phrase “the wreath of fame”:

The wreath the Muse presents is Virtue’s claim,

’Tis BRITAIN’S off ’ring! ’tis the wreath of FAME!

The deathless wreath, which owns a pow’r divine,

And, PATRON OF THE LYR E! that wreath is THINE!

Foster’d by THEE, who early bade it live,

The blended garland shall new beauties give;

New fragrance shed PARNASSIAN paths among,

To deck the length’ning labyrinths of song! (2: 96–97; 35–42)

She celebrates patronage because she has learned the hard way the

caprices and vicissitudes of commercial literary pursuits. Her affili-

ation with Moira cultivates a “blended garland” of patron and poet

that will enable her to produce new works of genius, marked by “new

fragrance” and “the length’ning labyrinths of song”—another echo

of her “Ode to Della Crusca,” but also a metaphor for her own lyrical

diversity, with which she has been “decked,” blessed, by the Parnassian

muses. Even here Robinson exhibits her indefatigable obsession with

poetic fame as well as the explicit association she makes between

9780230100251_07_ch05.indd 2419780230100251_07_ch05.indd 241 12/28/2010 11:09:07 AM12/28/2010 11:09:07 AM

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

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