‘Lofty mansions, warm and spacious;
Courtiers cringing and voracious;Misers scarce the wretched heeding;
Gallant soldier fighting, bleeding.’
January
1795
Mary Robinson
It’s
another less-than-catchy title, I know, but in fact it is a very accurate description
of the content of the poem. English
society at the start of 1795: that is exactly what this poem gives you. Not just the frozen snapshots of architecture
and furniture that we glimpse in museums and art galleries today (fascinating
and useful though they are). This is a
poem about activity, about living people, inhabiting a diverse and industrious
world. The power of this poem, for me,
comes from Robinson’s consistent use of active verbs throughout (the words
ending in ‘-ing’). There is no single
story to this poem; rather it is a long description of action, a collage of moving
images.
Still
more fascinating is the life of Mary Robinson herself. Actress, poet, society girl and royal
mistress, reading through the biography of her life on the Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography is a bit like reading a novel. By the time she wrote this poem in 1795, she
was nearing the end of her life (she died in 1800), yet her artistic appreciation
for detail, and her capacity for satiric observation, remains acute. Samuel
Taylor Coleridge (a major figure in the romanticist movement of poetry, whose
work will certainly feature in a later post!!) described her as ‘a woman of
undoubted Genius’.
I
enjoyed this poem so much, that I thought I would use it to test a new idea for
showcasing featured poems. It’s great to
read poetry on the page, but it’s also important to remember that
eighteenth-century poetry in particular was often intended to be read
aloud. As my computer demonstrated a profound
reluctance to upload only an audio file, this will run as a video, but there
are no visuals. Just sit back, close
your eyes, and step into the eighteenth-century:
You can find this poem:
(Poetry Foundation: an excellent source of free poetry, and also the text used for my reading)
You can find out more about Mary
Robinson:
(A biography of Robinson’s life by Paula Jane Byrne. I discovered this myself whilst writing this blogpost, and (having read some of Paula’s other books) I might now have to visit a bookshop… As always, check Amazon/Ebay etc for cheaper options or secondhand copies. Also, don't let the title confuse you: Perdita was a sort of pseudonym for Robinson throughout her relationship with the prince who would become King George IV)
Wikipedia!!
(another interesting blog article about the scandalous Mary Robinson)
The
Coleridge quotation was taken from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
entry for Mary Robinson. I’ve included
the link below, but sadly only those who have a registered account with the
site can access this information:
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23857?docPos=3
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23857?docPos=3
