During the first half of the nineteenth century, just as it appeared as though all composition of Marian poetry had come to an end in the wake of three centuries and it appeared as if there could be no poets left interested in resuscitating the genre, two associations arose, known respectively as the Oxford Movement and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, each of which enkindled in its membership a sense of nostalgia for mediæval forms of worship and schools of art and literature.
Before the movements came into being, however, two of England's most famous nineteenth-century poets had already put pen to paper in praise of Mary. They were George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) and his close friend Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). Both poets lived lives riddled with scandal and tragedy and died young. Though little in their lives indicated that they had a devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, each of them left a poem in her honour.
Byron's Ave Maria, which comes from Don Juan (1819-1824) is a poem marked by serenity in which the poet expresses a diffident reverence which seems uncharacteristic of him and of the context, the satire Don Juan (1818-23). However, it was in this work in which Byron, according to Sampson (1970:522), attained to the "full disclosure of his personality and the final expression of his genius. The variety both of matter and style is infinite". The praise of the mother figure as embodied by the Blessed Virgin comes as a surprise from Byron who as a child had a difficult relationship with his mother. In the almost awkward diffidence of Ave Maria, we see the instinctive shrinking of the poet as he addresses the mother figure, coupled with his yearning for her acceptance:
AVE MARIA
Ave Maria! blessed be the hour!
The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft
Have felt that moment in its fullest power
Sink o'er the earth so beautiful and soft,
While swung the deep bell in the distant tower
Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft,
And not a breath crept through the rosy air,
And yet the forest leaves seem'd stirr'd with prayer
Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of prayer!
Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of love!
Ave Maria! may our spirits dare
Look up to thine and to thy Son's above!
Ave Maria! oh that face so fair!
Those downcast eyes beneath the Almighty Dove
What though 'tis but a pictured image-strike?-
That painting is no idol, 'tis too like.
(1-16)
Like Byrom in the seventeenth century and Rossetti and Wilde in the nineteenth, Byron is seen here describing a picture of the Annunciation. The poet relies on repetition to get his poem into motion, emphasising . . . the hour/The time, the clime, the spot (2) but, rather than providing emphasis as the figure of speech normally does, in this case the repetition creates an effect of stammering, indicating that the poet may have had to conquer a shrinking sense of inadequacy, lest his love for his mother, existent at the kernel of the poem and focused on Mary, would be flung back at him. But his genius soon asserts itself and the conclusion of the first stanza brilliantly describes the stirring of the forest leaves as denoting the prayerful hands raised up to the Blessed Virgin by people from all generations who accept her as mother, both those who did and those who did not feel loved by their biological mothers.
Strong imagery is found when Shelley in Epipsychidion, addresses the Blessed Vorgin as Seraph of heaven:
Seraph of heaven! too gentle to be human,
Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman
All that is insupportable in thee
Of light, and love, and immortality!
Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse!
Veiled Glory of this lampless Universe!
Thou Moon beyond the clouds! Thou living Form
Among the Dead! Thou Star above the Storm!
Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror!
Thou Harmony of Nature's art! Thou Mirror
In whom, as in the splendour of the Sun,
All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on !
Ay, even the dim words which obscure thee now
Flash, lightning-like with unaccustomed glor;
I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song
All of its much mortality and wrong,
With those clear drops, which start like sacred dew
From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through,
Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy:
Then smile on it, so that it may not die.
(21-40)
In this poem, Shelley makes use of light and darkness imagery to contrast his disillusionment with the world, this lampless Universe (26) and his contrition for the deficiencies of his own poetry, the dim words which obscure thee now (33) with an unwavering faith in Mary whose eyes, tears, the sacred dew (37) spilling from the twin lights (her) sweet soul darkens through (38) will blot from this sad song/all of its much mortality (35-36) so that it may prove immortal. Thus far this request of Shelley, whom many believed to be an atheist as he professed during his lifetime, appears to have been granted, since it is still being transcribed in our present time.
The early deaths of the prodigies Byron and Shelley were partly instrumental in causing the Romantic Movement of poetry to flow to a halt. The stage was being set for the introduction of the Oxford Movement and subsequently for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. These two schools of poetry were founded to bring back a spiritual dimension into the world of verse for the benefit of those who - like their members - hungered for more than mere verbal splendour in a human or pagan setting. For its appeasement, this craving needed more spiritual poetic sustenance than that which was provided by the two brief Marian poems of Byron and Shelley, inspired and enduring though these may have proved to be.
Dr Luky Whittle
With thanks to the Tapestry Artist - Photograph by Catherine Nicolette
No comments:
Post a Comment