The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

Bell’s Laureates II 79

although the lines generally scan as iambic feet. The formal character-

istics of the first two stanzas may be illustrated as follows:

1–14: a 10 bc 8 a 10 de 6 fc 8 f 6 ggb 8 d 6 e 8

15–22: a 8 a 6 bcc 8 d 4 d 8 b 12

As this stanza graph indicates, Robinson’s two main formal princi-

ples are the interweaving and extension of rhymes and the exchange

of lines in varying syllabic lengths. The first stanza is particularly

founded on a principle of surprising recurrences of rhymes, partic-

ularly the delayed D and E rhymes mixed with quicker returns of

other rhymes. Obviously, for the first stanza she had something like

a sonnet in mind, in particular what we think of as the English son-

net, which contains seven rhymes. The shorter second stanza shows

Robinson constructing for extreme variation in line length. Many of

the other odes display similar technical complexities. For each stanza

of her irregular odes, Robinson seeks to construct a pattern of meter

and rhyme that is formally unlike any of the other stanzas. Each sec-

tion of one of these odes is meant to have a music of its own. In

this way, Robinson’s odes tend to be heterostrophic, rather than the

homostrophic ode on the Horatian model in which each stanza is the

same form, identical in rhyme scheme, number of lines, and metri-

cal pattern. Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” and the most famous

of Keats’s odes are homostrophic, while Wordsworth’s “Intimations”

ode, like most of Robinson’s, is heterostrophic. Except for some of

the comic odes of Peter Pindar that come close, Robinson’s odes

have greater formal variety stanza- by- stanza than any other odes I

have been able to locate in the second half of the eighteenth century.

Robinson’s irregular odes display such formal complexity they are

almost anti- doggerel. In other words, she is showing off her skills.

It was necessary for Robinson to demonstrate her technical virtu-

osity as an essential feature of eighteenth- century lyric performance,

which, before the sonnet revival (see chapter three), was primarily

restricted to the ode or to the elegiac (heroic) quatrain. In the essay

on Collins’s poetry cited earlier, Barbauld goes on to explain that an

“Ode, like a delicate piece of silver filligree [sic], receives in a manner

all its value from the art and curiosity of the workmanship” (v). As

Barbauld recognizes, an ode requires exquisite ornamentation. The

mid- century experiments in classical poetic practice regarding the reg-

ular and irregular ode, evident in the poetry of Collins, Gray, Joseph

Warton, and others, made readers of poetry particularly sensitive to

stylistic features as a consideration distinct from the substance of a

9780230100251_04_ch02.indd 799780230100251_04_ch02.indd 79 12/28/2010 11:08:28 AM12/28/2010 11:08:28 AM

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

Cop

yright material fr

om www

.palgra

veconnect.com - licensed to Univer

sitetsbib

lioteket i

Tr

omso - P

algra

veConnect - 2011-04-13