The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

78 The Poetry of Mary Robinson

the World on 25 August 1787 and then in Poetry of the World. Della

Crusca’s ode, as Judith Pascoe points out, formally alludes to Collins’s

“Ode to Evening” and Barbauld’s “Ode to Spring” (80). But the

important point is that her ode pays tribute to Della Crusca’s mastery

of his predecessors’ form, and thus demonstrates her own virtuosity.

This poetic form is unrhymed but develops in iambic pentameter pairs

followed by iambic trimeter pairs, sonically approaching blank verse

but with a subtle metrical syncopation. Always attentive to sound and

form, Robinson noted Merry’s nonce form and performed it as part of

her tribute to Della Crusca. She writes to him that she will “iterate thy

strain, / And chaunt thy matchless numbers o’er and o’er” (1: 103;

53–4). Her formal choice confirms this promise.^8

The distinctive feature of the majority of Robinson’s odes is extreme

formal variation with particularly intricate rhyme schemes, lending

themselves to unique display on Bell’s elegantly designed page. The

first two stanzas of Robinson’s “Ode to Envy” will provide a sufficient

example of the character of most of her odes from the 1791 volume:

DEEP in th’ abyss where frantic horror bides,

In thickest mists of vapours fell,

Where wily Serpents hissing glare

And the dark Demon of Revenge resides,

At midnight’s murky hour

Thy origin began:

Rapacious MALICE was thy sire;

Thy Dam the sullen witch, Despair;

Thy Nurse, insatiate Ire.

The FATES conspir’d their ills to twine,

About thy heart’s infected shrine;

They gave thee each disastrous spell,

Each desolating pow’r,

To blast the fairest hopes of man.

Soon as thy fatal birth was known,

From her unhallow’d throne

With ghastly smile pale Hecate sprung;

Thy hideous form the Sorc’ress press’d

With kindred fondness to her breast;

Her haggard eye

Shot forth a ray of transient joy,

Whilst thro’ th’ infernal shades exulting clamours rung. (1: 86; 1–22)

Robinson’s goal appears to be to construct stanzas with as much lyri-

cal variation as she can muster. Again, she is working in syllabic meter,

9780230100251_04_ch02.indd 789780230100251_04_ch02.indd 78 12/28/2010 11:08:28 AM12/28/2010 11:08:28 AM

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

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