Speaking of poets laureate, one of the more interesting holders of the post in the not-so-distant past is Robert Bridges (1844-1930). His appointment ran from 1913 until his death. He disliked publicity and went into retreat immediately after accepting the honour, leaving, it is said, a maid who was completely deaf to answer the front door to the paparazzi. The Georgian species (pap. georgianus?), clearly better mannered or less determined than today's breed, quickly dispersed.
Bridges's poetry soon fell out of favour. It was overshadowed by TS Eliot's achievement and, a little later, by that of Auden and his circle. Today, Bridges is most likely to be remembered for championing his friend Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose work would have remained unpublished without that intervention. But the tone of his prescient and imaginative championship also attracted criticism. Admiring as he was, Bridges in his Introduction scolded Hopkins for oddity and obscurity. Later generations, better attuned to maverick genius, have looked down on Bridges all the more.
Is this altogether fair? Bridges, independently, made experiments in prosody and the use of speech rhythms – innovations less arresting than those of Hopkins but still significant. He worked in a variety of genres, from the epic The Testament of Beauty (still readable and interesting as argument, if lacking poetic colour) to short lyrics inspired by the work of Heine. These romantic small poems may seem dated, but they are beautifully made. Bridges was a master of traditional versification. No dull metrist, he understood how to pace the sentence against the line and vary its rhythms. His poems are less emotional than AE Housman's – and more subtle.
Perhaps the most impressive work he did was his "Englishing" of the classical metres. He produced original poems in hexameter and translations that are the earliest attempts to recreate the rhythms of Virgil and Homer. An extract from Ibant Obscuri (Book VI of Virgil's Aeneid) is this week's poem.
Bridges described it as a "line for line paraphrase". He conveys the Latin rhythms very effectively, but, English being what it is, there is a thick, knotty sort of texture, unlike Virgil's lucidity.
The swelling sail of the hexameter may be too word-laden for some tastes, but any padding is made from a lustrous fabric beautifully stitched into the essential narrative. A phrase such as "blood-shotten eyeballs", for example, seems to me stronger and more hideously evocative than mere "blood-shot eyes". Sometimes an archaism or elision, adopted no doubt mainly for rhythmical purpose, enhances the diction, giving it an earthy, vernacular quality: "a-down", "drown i'the swift wake-water", "where wer' an end their names to relate?" Bridges thought that the "e" on the end of words such as "were" or "nature" affected the pronunciation. Perhaps it did – for him. As a man of Kent, albeit schooled at Eton and Oxford, perhaps he was that rare Englishman who pronounced his "r"s.
One of his hobbies as a contented senior laureate was tapestry work. In a tapestry, the medium is too complex for absolute clarity. That is the metaphor Bridges's Virgil brings to my mind. At the same time, the meaning is clear, helped along by the music. The sound of the verse is rarely sweetly lyrical: it is punchy and sometimes packs in some internal rhyme or Anglo-Saxon-ish alliteration: "These floods one ferryman serveth, most awful of aspect …" The control of sound and syntax, and the vividness of imagery are not too far short of Bridges's admired master, Milton.
In the passage below, Aeneas, having procured the magical golden bough, has persuaded the Cumaean Sybil to lead him down to the underworld, where he will meet with the shade of his father, Anchises. As it begins, the Sybil and Aeneas have reached the threshold of "the void and vasty dominion of Ades".
From Ibant Obscuri
Midway of all this tract, with secular arms an immense elm,
Reareth a crowd of branches, aneath whose leafy protection
Vain dreams thickly nestle, clinging unto the foliage on high:
And many strange creatures of monstrous form and features
Stable about th'entrance, Centaur and Scylla's abortion,
And hundred-handed Briareus, and Lerna's wildbeast
Roaring amain, and clothed in frightful flame the Chimaera,
Gorgons and Harpies and Pluto's three-bodied ogre.
In terror, Aeneas upheld his sword to defend him,
With ready naked point confronting their dreaded onset:
And had not the Sybil warn'd how these lively spirits were
All incorporeal, flitting in thin maskery of form,
He had assailed their host, and wounded vainly the void air.
Hence is a road that led them a-down to the Tartarean streams,
Where Acheron's whirlpool impetuous, into the reeky
Deep of Cokytos disgorgeth, with muddy burden.
These floods one ferryman serveth, most awful of aspect,
Of squalor infernal, Chāron: all filthily unkempt
That woolly white cheek-fleece, and fiery the blood-shotten eyeballs:
On one shoulder a cloak knotted up his nudity vaunteth.
He himself plieth oar or pole, manageth tiller and sheet,
And the relics of men in his ash-grey barge ferries over;
Already old, but green to a god and hearty will age be.
Now hitherward to the bank much folk were crowding, a medley
Of men and matrons; nor did death's injury conceal
Bravespirited heroes, young maidens beauteous unwed,
And boys borne to the grave in sight of their sorrowing sires.
Countless as in the forest, at a first white frosting of autumn
Sere leaves fall to the ground; or like whenas over the ocean
Myriad birds come thickly flocking, when wintry December
Drives them afar southward for shelter upon sunnier shores,
So thronged they; and each his watery journey demanded,
All to the further bank stretching-out their arms impatient:
But the sullen boatman took now one now other at will,
While some from the river forbade he, an' drave to a distance.
Aeneas in wonder alike and deep pity then spake …
Read the full translation, and Bridges's Introduction, here and Virgil's text in Latin here.