Mary Robinson was a known feminist and women’s rights advocate of the second half of the eighteenth century, and the first mistress of the Prince of Wales (to be later crowned King George VI). She lived a lifestyle many would even today call scandalous. She was known not only for her acting and poetry, but for her great beauty; it is beauty she comes to write about in two of her poems, The Old Beggar and Ode to Beauty.
From the tone and title of these two poems, it is initially difficult to determine the message Robinson is attempting to deliver. The Old Beggar seems to be only about a haggard old man hard on the eyes, and Ode to Beauty at first looks as if it will be only stanza after stanza of praise to this young beauty. When one becomes familiar with Robinson’s feminist background, these concepts create dissonance. Robinson was an actress, which is how she eventually caught the eye of the Prince of Wales. Though she was married to another man, she agreed to an affair with the Prince, which lasted several years before being ended by the Prince. Ten years later, Robinson penned her Ode.
Robinson didn’t believe in the traditional; one might argue that for a time she believed only in the beautiful. However, she eventually learned that beauty fades, and the beautiful will fail her; she turned to poetry and feminism, and she exhibits her beliefs in the last lines of her ode:
For ah ! the beauteous bud, too soon,
Scorch’d by the burning eye of day;
Shrinks from the sultry glare of noon,
Droops its enamell’d brow, and blushing, dies away.
Robinson, Mary.”Ode to Beauty.” Digital Library UPenn. Web. 11 Sept.2012.
- “The Old Beggar.” Google Books. Web.11 Sept. 2012.
