The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

Bell’s Laureates I 53

Absorbing these inf luences, Laura proposes that she and the Muse/

Della Crusca share a “sweet converse” not founded on passion (1:

54; 49). Unlike her previous poem, this one is no erotic invitation;

instead, the Laura avatar rejects a sexualized Sensibility in favor of an

intellectual exchange:

But, if thy Magic pow’rs impart

One SOFT SENSATION o’er the Heart;

If thy warm precepts can dispense

One THRILLING TRANSPORT o’er my sense;

O! keep thy Gifts, and let me f ly,

In APATH Y’S cold Arms to Die. (1: 55; 61–6)

Perhaps alluding to Petrarch’s erotic fascination for Laura, the poem

asserts this Laura’s right to liberty from the thralldom that so fre-

quently limits opportunities and choices for women. This is one

of Robinson’s great themes throughout her poetry. Her choice of

Apathy is a reference to Anna Matilda’s travesty of Indifference,

but without the comic undertones that so frustrate Della Crusca.

This poem is something of a watershed for Robinson’s career: she

expanded it to include specific references to Della Crusca, Ovid, and

Pindar and placed it at the opening of her 1791 volume, where it leads

a series of irregular, mostly allegorical odes that concludes with two

odes addressed to Della Crusca and to Tarleton. Laura’s “The Muse,”

therefore, strikes the keynote for Robinson’s poetic program. She will

not escape the “thrilling transport” that poetry provokes; but, like

Edna St. Vincent Millay, she will contain the erotic chaos within the

bounds of poetic form.

Laura’s stance in “The Muse” becomes Robinson’s thesis in

“Ode to the Muse.” In the newspaper, however, it finally provoked a

response, not from Della Crusca, but “Leonardo,” on 21 November

1788. Here, the Laura avatar becomes fully initiated and inscribed
      within the Della Crusca network, for, as it turns out, the Leonardo
      avatar is Della Crusca in disguise. Robinson’s maneuvering herself into
      the network, her reinvigorating of the heteroerotic dynamic, inspires
      the creation of yet another avatar: an instance of shape- shifting on
      the part of Merry that highlights the f luidity of identity and infinite
      potential for play. When Leonardo’s poem, written by Merry, appears,
      Topham hailed Leonardo as the latest disciple of “the Della Crusca
      school,” citing the powerful influence he is having on the literary
      scene. Of course, this is an inside joke because Topham undoubt-
      edly knew it was Merry. In “To Laura,” a sympathetic Leonardo,

9780230100251_03_ch01.indd 539780230100251_03_ch01.indd 53 12/31/2010 4:20:15 PM12/31/2010 4:20:15 PM

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

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