19th-century local newspaper poem of the week, 3
My ‘poem of the week’ concerns an untitled, anonymous “Song” published in the Bristol Mercury on 24th April 1820.
The Bristol Mercury, founded in 1790, circulated in Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon and south Wales, and was firmly radical in its politics. In 1820 it usually published one poem each week, in the typical ‘poet’s corner’ at the top left of the back page of this four-page broadsheet. The poems were often political – anti-Tory and anti-government – or commented on the news stories of this eventful year, such as the Spanish Revolution, the accession of George IV or the Queen Caroline affair. Most poems were anonymous. On the page, the verse is followed by some ‘remarks on the state of Spanish literature’, the trial of the Cato Street conspirators, London gossip, a celebratory Reform dinner and announcements of births, marriages and deaths.
The publisher in 1820 was Thomas John Manchee, a radical with literary interests. He was a member of the learned Camden Society, and a political opponent of another radical newspaper publisher, James Acland of the Bristolian.
This poem consists of three equal eight-line stanzas, each very different in tone and content. It begins as a piece of typical, unassuming love poetry, with a male speaker declaring his love for a beautiful woman. The opening stanza adopts a blazon style, although instead of merely praising her physical beauty, it is the maid’s inner beauty which is admired; it is her “kindness” (3) and lack of “conceit” (1) that are seen as her finest qualities.
As we move to the second stanza there is a definite shift in tone. We move from the speaker admiring the woman at a distance, to the speaker making physical contact with her, “with her hand placed in mine, which I press’d” (12) This is not only the moment of physical contact between the pair, but also the moment when we witness a change in the woman, as she becomes more meek and submissive. She no longer “speaks” (3) but “whispers” (15) and instead of imparting a “half-stolen look” (5) she now keeps her “eyes cast down” (14). The end of the first stanza claims that her heart is “all her own” (8), yet by the conclusion of the second stanza, “her heart was mine” (16). This could be interpreted as male dominance and possession.
The final stanza considers the woman after the speaker declares her as “mine” (16). She has “tears” in her eyes (17), she “trembled” (20), her face revealing her innermost “fears” (19). Gone is the single, desirable woman in the first stanza, to be replaced by a sad, scared shadow of her former self.
Although the speaker of this poem is male, the writer of this poem could feasibly be an unhappily married woman, wanting to reveal her lost autonomy due to love.
gummygunk
andulkaphoto
vaporwave
dededos
snowghoul
tangentwithtanner
