The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

Bell’s Laureates II 73

her 1791 volume. In its original form, Robinson’s “Lines on Beauty”

achieves its elegance well enough in a short lyric of twenty- four lines

whose form pleasingly tropes its subject, the transience of beauty. Laura

Maria addresses “EXULTING BEAUTY!” as “the phantom of an hour,”

asking, “Ah! what avails thy fascinating pow’r / Thy thrilling smile, thy

witching art?” (1: 59; 1–4). Even as Beauty’s “magic spells enchain

the heart,” the allegorical figure is also subjected to the persecution

of allegorical antagonists Envy, Flattery, and Slander. Allegorical per-

sonification such as this pervades odes of the second half of the eigh-

teenth century (and into the nineteenth, as Wordsworth’s 1807 “Ode to

Duty” illustrates). This kind of allegory derives much of its impact from

the visual effects of its textual representation in the thick columns of the

newspaper. Personifications of abstractions always merit small capitals,

and they serve as keywords for the reader’s eye to scan before, or even

without, reading the poem proper. Considering the text, paratext, and

context together shows the poem in a different light: the shape of the

stanzas, defined by the length of the lines, and Bell’s ornate printing

features recommend the poem as a pleasurable and elegant respite from

the business of the news and its dense textuality. The newspaper poem is

literally an attraction. Robinson’s job as a newspaper poet is to construct

lines and stanzas that invite readers’ attention and that offer sensual and

affective rewards without taxing them too much.

Robinson’s “Lines on Beauty” does have something to say, how-

ever, which is developed further through form. The opening apos-

trophe and subsequent allegorical assault establishes the thesis of

the poem. But the rest of the poem, in two stanzas, shifts from the

second- person didacticism to a more subjective lyricism and from

allegory to simile:

So have I seen an infant Flow’r,

Bespangled o’er with silv’ry dew,

At purple dawn’s refreshing hour

Glow with warm tints of Ty r i a n h u e,

Beneath an aged Oak’s wide spreading shade,

Where no rude winds, or beating storms invade: (1: 59–60; 11–6)

This stanza diverges greatly from the form established in the first

stanza, with all of its allegorical nominatives. Here the speaker turns

to her own experience, using the f lower as a writerly figure for beauty

instead of continuing the simpler performative allegory of the first

stanza. Obviously, her images of freshness, ripeness, and shade rep-

resent a state of innocence that cannot last. Robinson’s well- placed

9780230100251_04_ch02.indd 739780230100251_04_ch02.indd 73 12/28/2010 11:08:27 AM12/28/2010 11:08:27 AM

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

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