Robert Bridges
Robert Bridges | |
---|---|
Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom | |
In office 25 July 1913 – 21 April 1930 | |
Monarch | George V |
Preceded by | Alfred Austin |
Succeeded by | John Masefield |
Personal details | |
Born | Robert Seymour Bridges 23 October 1844 Walmer, Kent, England, UK |
Died | 21 April 1930 Boars Hill, Berkshire, England | (aged 85)
Spouse | Monica Bridges (born Waterhouse) |
Children | Elizabeth Daryush Edward Bridges |
Alma mater | Corpus Christi College, Oxford St Bartholomew's Hospital Eton College |
Occupation | Writer |
Awards | Poet Laureate |
Robert Seymour Bridges
Personal and professional life
Bridges was born at
Bridges was educated at Eton College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford.[2] He went on to study medicine in London at St Bartholomew's Hospital, intending to practise until the age of forty and then retire to write poetry. He practised as a casualty physician at his teaching hospital (where he made a series of highly critical remarks about the Victorian medical establishment) and subsequently as a full physician to the Great Northern Central Hospital (1876–85)[3](later the Royal Northern Hospital). He was also a physician to the Hospital for Sick Children.
Lung disease forced Bridges to retire from his post as physician in 1885,
He was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1900. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1913, the only medical graduate to have held the office.
He was the father of poet Elizabeth Daryush and of the cabinet secretary Edward Bridges.
Literary work
As a poet Bridges stands rather apart from the current of modern English verse, but his work has had great influence in a select circle, by its restraint, purity, precision and delicacy yet strength of expression. It embodies a distinct theory of
In the book
"Melancholia"
The sickness of desire, that in dark days
Looks on the imagination of despair,
Forgetteth man, and stinteth God his praise;
Nor but in sleep findeth a cure for care.
Incertainty that once gave scope to dream
Of laughing enterprise and glory untold,
Is now a blackness that no stars redeem,
A wall of terror in a night of cold.
Fool! thou that hast impossibly desired
And now impatiently despairest, see
How nought is changed: Joy's wisdom is attired
Splended for others' eyes if not for thee:
Not love or beauty or youth from earth is fled:
If they delite thee not, 'tis thou art dead.
Bridges's poetry was privately printed in the first instance, and was slow in making its way beyond a comparatively small circle of his admirers. His best work is to be found in his Shorter Poems (1890), and a complete edition (to date) of his Poetical Works (6 vols.) was published in 1898–1905.
Despite being made poet laureate in 1913, Bridges was never a very well-known poet and only achieved his great popularity shortly before his death with The Testament of Beauty. However, his verse evoked response in many great British composers of the time. Among those to set his poems to music were Hubert Parry, Gustav Holst and later Gerald Finzi.[6]
During the
At Oxford, Bridges befriended Gerard Manley Hopkins, who is now considered a superior poet but who owes his present fame to Bridges's efforts in arranging the posthumous publication (1918) of his verse.
Bridges received advice from the young phonetician David Abercrombie on the reformed spelling system he was devising for the publication of his collected essays (later published in seven volumes by Oxford University Press, with the help of the distinguished typographer Stanley Morison, who designed the new letters). Thus Robert Bridges contributed to phonetics and he was also a founder member of the Society for Pure English.[8]
Hymnody
Bridges made an important contribution to hymnody with the publication in 1899 of his Yattendon Hymnal, which he created specifically for musical reasons. This collection of hymns, although not a financial success, became a bridge between the Victorian hymnody of the last half of the 19th century and the modern hymnody of the early 20th century.
Bridges wrote and also translated historic hymns, and many of these were included in
- "Ah, holy Jesu, how hast thou offended" ("Herzliebster Jesu", Johann Heermann, 1630)
- "All my hope on God is founded" (Joachim Neander, c. 1680)
- "Happy are they, they that love God"
- "Jesu, joy of man's desiring" (Martin Jahn, 1661)
- "Love of the Father, Love of God the Son" ("Amor Patris et Filii", 12th century)
- "O gladsome light, O grace" (Phos Hilaron)
- "O sacred head, sore wounded" ("O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden", Paul Gerhardt, 1656)
- "O splendour of God's glory bright" (Ambrose, 4th century)
- "Rejoice, O land, in God thy might"
- The Baptist Hymn Book, University Press, Oxford 1962
- "The duteous day now closeth" ("Nun ruhen alle Wälder", Paul Gerhardt, 1647)
- "Thee will I love, my God and King"
- "When morning gilds the skies" (stanza 3; Katholisches Gesangbuch, 1744)
Phonetic alphabet
Robert Bridges developed his own phonetic alphabet for English,
Major works
Dates given are of first publication and significant revisions.
Poetry collections
- The Growth of Love (1876; 1889; 1898), a sequence of (24; 79; 69) sonnets
- Prometheus the Firegiver: A Mask in the Greek Manner (1883)
- Eros and Psyche: A Narrative Poem in Twelve Measures (1885; 1894), a story from the Latin of Apuleius
- Shorter Poems, Books I–IV (1890)
- Shorter Poems, Books I–V (1894)
- New Poems (1899)
- Demeter: A Mask (1905), performed in 1904 at the opening of the Somerville College Library
- Ibant Obscuri: An Experiment in the Classical Hexameter (1916), with reprint of summary of Stone's Prosody, accompanied by 'later observations & modifications'
- October and Other Poems (1920)
- The Tapestry: Poems (1925), in neo-Miltonic syllabics
- New Verse (1926), includes verse of The Tapestry
- The Testament of Beauty (1929)
Verse drama
- Nero (1885), an historical tragedy; called The First Part of Nero subsequent to the publication of Nero: Part II
- The Feast of Bacchus (1889); partly translated from the Heauton-Timoroumenos of Terence
- Achilles in Scyros (1890), a drama in a mixed manner
- Palicio (1890), a romantic drama in five acts in the Elizabethan manner
- The Return of Ulysses (1890), a drama in five acts in a mixed manner
- The Christian Captives (1890), a tragedy in five acts in a mixed manner; on the same subject as Calderón's El Principe Constante
- The Humours of the Court (1893), a comedy in three acts; founded on Calderón's El secreto á voces and on Lope de Vega's El Perro del hortelano
- Nero, Part II (1894)
Prose
- Milton's Prosody, With a Chapter on Accentual Verse(1893; 1901; 1921), based on essays published in 1887 and 1889
- Keats (1895)
- Hymns from the Yattendon Hymnal (1899)
- The Spirit of Man (1916)
- Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918), edited with notes by R.B.
- The Necessity of Poetry (1918)
- Collected Essays, Papers, Etc. (1927–36)
See also
References
Citations
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/32066. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ "Bridges, Robert". EnglishVerse.com. 2021. Retrieved 13 November 2023.
- ^ a b Jewesbury, Eric (1956). The Royal Northern Hospital 1856-1956. London: H. K. Lewis & Co. Ltd. pp. II, 142.
- ^ Collins A S, English Literature of the Twentieth Century, University Tutorial Press, London, 1951.
- ^ "No. 14553". The Edinburgh Gazette. 4 June 1929. p. 567.
- ^ Finzi, Gerald (1939), Seven Poems of Robert Bridges for mixed voices, Boosey and Hawkes
- ISBN 9781551113760.
- ^ Horsley E M, Hutchinson's New Twentieth Century Encyclopedia, London 1964
- ^ "Robert Bridges' literary alphabet". The Independent. 76: 131. 16 October 1913.
- ^ Bridges, Robert (1932). Collected Essays, Papers, &c., of Robert Bridges. Oxford: University Press.
Further reading
- Bridges, Robert (1936). The Poetical Works of Robert Bridges. Oxford Editions of Standard Authors (2nd ed.). Oxford: University Press. (reissued 1953 with The Testament of Beauty)
- Guérard, Albert Jr. (1942). Robert Bridges: A Study of Traditionalism in Poetry. Harvard University Press.
- Phillips, Catherine (1992). Robert Bridges: A Biography. Oxford: University Press. ISBN 0-19-212251-7.
- Stanford, Donald E. (1978). In the Classic Mode: The Achievement of Robert Bridges. Associated University Presses. ISBN 0-87413-118-9.
External links
- Works by Robert Bridges at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Robert Bridges at Internet Archive
- Works by Robert Bridges at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Robert Bridges's Grave