Robert Bridges

Dr. Robert Seymour Bridges, OM, (23 October 1844 - 21 April 1930) was an English poet, who served as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.

Robert Bridges (1884-1930), from Poetical Works of Robert Bridges, 1912. Courtesy Internet Archive.

Robert Bridges
Born	October 23 1844(1844-Template:MONTHNUMBER-23) Walmer, Kent, UK
Died	April 21 1930(1930-Template:MONTHNUMBER-21) Boar's Hill, Oxford, UK
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Eton, Oxford
Genres	Poetry
Notable award(s)	Poet Laureate

Life

Youth and education

Bridges was born in Walmer, Kent, England.

He was educated at Eton College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. At Corpus Christi, he became friends with Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Bridges went on to study medicine in London at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, intending to practise until the age of 40 and then retire to write poetry.

Career

Bridges practiced 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 (later Royal) Northern Hospital. He was also a physician to the Hospital for Sick Children.

Lung disease forced him to retire in 1882, and from that point on he devoted himself to writing and literary research. However, Bridges' literary work had started long before his retirement, his debut collection of poems having been published in 1873.

In 1884 he married Monica Waterhouse, daughter of Alfred Waterhouse R.A. Their daughter was poet Elizabeth Daryush (1887-1977).

Bridges spent the rest of his life in rural seclusion, originally at Yattendon, Berkshire, then at Boars Hill, Oxford.

In 1909 Bridges edited and had published a selected Poems of his old friend, Richard Watson Dixon (1833-1900). In 1911, he did the same for his cousin, Digby Mackworth Dolben (1848-1867), who had drowned at age 19 almost 50 years before. Finally, and most significantly for modern English poetry, in 1918 he brought out a selected Poems of his university friend, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889). Hopkins owes his reputation to Bridges' efforts in arranging the posthumous publication of his verse.

He died at Boars Hill in April, 1930, aged 85.

Writing

Bridges stands rather apart from the current of modern English poetry, but his work has had great influence in a select circle, due to its restraint, purity, precision, and delicacy yet strength of expression. It embodies a distinct theory of prosody.

In the book Milton's Prosody, he took an empirical approach to examining Milton's use of blank verse, and developed the controversial theory that Milton's practice was essentially syllabic. He considered free verse to be too limiting, and explained his position in the essay "Humdrum and Harum-Scarum". His own efforts to "free" verse resulted in the poems he called "Neo-Miltonic Syllabics", which were collected in New Verse (1925). The meter of these poems was based on syllables rather than accents, and he used the principle again in the long philosophical poem The Testament of Beauty (1929). His best-known poems, however, are to be found in the two earlier volumes of Shorter Poems (1890, 1894). He also wrote verse plays, with limited success, and literary criticism, including a study of the work of John Keats.

Bridges' poetry was originally privately printed, 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). A complete edition to that point of his Poetical Works (6 volumes) was published in 1898-1905.

Despite being made Poet Laureate in 1913, Bridges was never a very well-known poet and achieved his great popularity only shortly before his death with The Testament of Beauty. However, his verse evoked response in many great British composers of the time.

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 translated important historic hymns, and many of these were included in Songs of Syon (1904) and the later English Hymnal (1906). Several of Bridges' translations are still in use today:

• Ah, Holy Jesus (Johann Heermann, 1630)
• All My Hope on God Is Founded (Joachim Neander, c. 1680)
• Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring (Martin Jahn, 1661)
• O Gladsome Light (Phos Hilaron)
• O Sacred Head, sore wounded (Paulus Gerhardt, 1656)
• O Splendour of God's Glory Bright (Ambrose,4th cent.)
• When morning gilds the skies (stanza 3; Katholisches Gesangbuch, 1744)

Phonetics

One of Abercrombie's early projects during this period was to advise Bridges, the Poet Laureate, on the reformed spelling system he was devising for the publication of his collected essays (later published in 7 volumes by Oxford University Press, with the help of typographer Stanley Morison, who designed the new letters). Thus Robert Bridges has also contributed to phonetics.

Recognition

Bridges on cover of Time magazine, Dec. 2, 1929.

Bridges was elected a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1900.

9 of his poems ("My Delight and Thy Delight", "Spirits", "Nightingales", "A Passer-by", "Absence", "On a Dead Child", "Pater Filio", "Winter Nightfall", and "When Death to Either shall come") were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900.

The University of Oxford awarded him an honourary D.Litt. in 1912.

He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1913, and held that position until his death in 1930.

He received the Order of Merit in 1929 for The Testament of Beauty.

In popular culture

Among those to set his poems to music were Hubert Parry, Gustav Holst, and later Gerald Finzi.

Publications

Poetry

• Poems. London: Pickering, 1873.
• The Growth of Love. London: Bumpus, 1876
  • revised & enlarged, Oxford, UK: H. Daniel, 1889.
  • (limited edition). Portland, ME: T.B. Mosher, 1894.
• Poems by the Author of "The Growth of Love". London: Bumpus, 1879.
• Poems. London: Bumpus, 1880.
• Poems. Oxford, UK: H. Daniel, 1884.
• Eros & Psyche: A poem in twelve measures. London: George Bell, 1885
  • revised edition, 1894.
• Shorter Poems (Books I-IV). London: George Bell, 1890.
• Eden: An oratorio (with music by C.V. Stanford). London: George Bell; London & New York: Novello, Ewer, 1891.
• Shorter Poems, Book V. Oxford, UK: H. Daniel, 1893.
• Invocation to Music: An ode (In Honour of Henry Purcell). London: Novello, Ewer, 1895.
  • published in U.S. as Purcell Ode, and other poems. Chicago: Way & William, 1896.
• Shorter Poems (Books I-V). London: George Bell, 1896.
• Christmas, 1897. Oxford, UK: Daniel, 1897.
• Poetical Works. (6 volumes), London: Smith, Elder, 1898-1905. Volume I, 1898; Volume II, 1899; Volume III, 1901; Volume IV, 1902; Volume V, 1902; Volume VI, 1905.
• Poetical Works; excluding the eight dramas. London, New York, Toronto, & Melbourne: Henry Frowde / Oxford University Press, 1912.
• Ibant Obscuri, An experiment in the classical hexameter (paraphrases of the Aeneid, VI: 257-751, 893-898, and Iliad, XXIV: 339-660). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1916 (originally published in New Quarterly, 1909).
• Britannia Victrix. London: Oxford University Press, 1918.
• October, and other poems; with occasional verses on the War. London: Heinemann, 1920; New York: Knopf, 1920.
• New Verse: Explanations of the prosody of my late syllabic free verse. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1925.
• The Tapestry (collection), [London], 1925.
• The Testament of Beauty. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1929.
• On Receiving Trivia from the Author, Mill House Press. England: Stanford Dingley, 1930.
• Shorter Poems. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1931.
• Verses Written for Mrs. Daniel (with introduction by George Gordon). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1932.
• Poetical Works; excluding the Eight Dramas (2nd edition). London: Oxford University Press, 1936.
• Selected Poems (edited by Donald E. Stanford). Cheadle, UK: Carcanet Press, 1974.
• A Choice of Bridges's Verse (selected with an introduction by Lord David Cecil). London: Faber, 1987.

Plays

• Prometheus the Firegiver (masque). London: H. Daniel, 1883.
• Nero. London: Bell & Bumpus, 1885 (retitled as Nero Part I, 1894).
• The Feast of Bacchus. London: H. Daniel, 1889.
• Palicio: A romantic drama in five acts in the Elizabethan manner. London: Bumpus, 1890.
• The Return of Ulysses. London: Bumpus, 1890.
• The Christian Captives. London: Bumpus, 1890.
• Achilles in Scyros. London: Bumpus, 1890.
• The Humours of the Court: A comedy in three acts. London: George Bell / Bumpus, 1893; New York: Macmillan, 1893.
• Nero Part 2. London: Bell & Bumpus, 1894.
• Demeter (masque). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905.

Non-fiction

• An Account of the Casualty Department. London: St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 1878.
• On the Elements of Milton's Blank Verse in Paradise Lost. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887 (revised & republished in Milton's Prosody, 1893).
• On the Prosody of Paradise Regained and Sampson Agonistes. Oxford: B.H. Blackwell / London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1889 (revised & republished in Milton's Prosody, 1893).
• Milton's Prosody: An examination of the blank verse in Milton's later poems. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1893.
  • revised & enlarged, with an additional chapter by William Johnson Stone. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1901
  • revised & enlarged again, with an additional chapter on accentual verse. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1921.
• John Keats: A Critical Essay. Oxford, UK: 1895.
• A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing. Oxford, UK: B.H. Blackwell / London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1901.
• About Hymns. Church Music Society (Occasional Papers #II), 1911.
• A Tract on the Present State of English Pronunciation. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1913.
• An Address to the Swindon Branch of the Workers' Educational Association. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1916.
• The Necessity of Poetry (essay). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1918.
• Henry Bradley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926 (republished in Three Friends, 1932).
• The Influence of the Audience: Considerations Preliminary to the Psychological Analysis of Shakespeare's Characters. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, 1926
  • originally published in The Works of William Shakespeare, Volume 10. Stratford-upon-Avon: Shakespeare Head Press, 1907.
• Collected Essays, Papers, Etc. (ten volumes). London: Oxford University Press (London), 1927-1936.
• Poetry (essay). London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1929.
• Three Friends: Memoirs of Digby Mackworth Dolben, Richard Watson Dixon, Henry Bradley. London: Oxford University Press, 1932.

Edited

• Hymns: The Yattendon Hymnal (4 parts, with H. Ellis Wooldridge). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1895-1899.
• Richard Watson Dixon, Poems by the Late Rev. Dr. Richard Watson Dixon. London: Smith, Elder, 1909.
• Digby Mackworth Dolben, The Poems of Digby Mackworth Dolben. London & New York: Humphrey Milford, for Oxford University Press, 1911.
• The Spirit of Man: An anthology in English & French from the philosophers & poets (poetry and prose). London, New York, Bombay, Calcutta & Madras: Longmans Green, 1916.
• Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poems. London: Humphrey Milford, 1918; 2nd edition, 1931.
• (Compiler) The Chilswell Book of English Poetry Compiled and Annotated for the Use of SchoolsLondon: Longmans, 1924.
• The B.B.C.'s Recommendations for Pronouncing Doubtful Words, Reissued with Criticisms. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929.

Letters

• Correspondence of Robert Bridges and Henry Bradley 1900-1923. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940.
• Correspondence of Robert Bridges and W.B. Yeats (edited by Richard J. Finneran). London: Macmillan, 1977.
• Selected Letters of Robert Bridges with the Correspondence of Robert Bridges and Lionel Muirhead (edited by Donald E. Stanford, two volumes). Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1983-1984.
• XXI Letters: A Correspondence between Robert Bridges and R.C. Trevelyan on "New Verse" and "The Testament of Beauty". Stanford Dingley, England, UK: Mill House Press, 1955.

Nightingales- Robert Bridges

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.

See also

• List of British poets
• List of English-language hymnists

Preceded by Alfred Austin

British Poet Laureate 1913–1930

Succeeded by John Masefield

References

"London Snow" by Robert Bridges (read by Tom O'Bedlam)

• Guérard, Albert, Jr.: Robert Bridges: A Study of Traditionalism in Poetry, Harvard University Press, 1942.
• Phillips, Catherine: Robert Bridges: A Biography, Oxford University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-19-212251-7
• Stanford, Donald E.: In the Classic Mode: The Achievement of Robert Bridges, Associated University Presses, 1978. ISBN 0-87413-118-9

External links

Poems

• "Triolet"
• Robert Bridges 1844-1930 at the Poetry Foundation
• Poem of the Week: "Ibant Obscuri" at The Guardian
• Robert Bridges (1844-1930) at Sonnet Central
• Robert Bridges in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900: 9 poems ("My Delight and Thy Delight", "Spirits", "Nightingales", "A Passer-by", "Absence", "On a Dead Child", "Pater Filio", "Winter Nightfall", and "When Death to Either shall come")
• 11 poems by Bridges: 'November," "October," "North Wind in October," "Last Week of February, 1890," "London Snow," "When June is come (2 poems), "January," "Early Autumn," "The evening darkens over," "Winter Nightfall"
• Bridges, Robert (1844-1930) (9 poems) at Representative Poetry Online. ("The Affliction of Richard," "Eros," "The Evening Darkens over," "I Love all Beauteous Things," "London Snow," "Low Barometer," "On a Dead Child," "The Testament of Beauty," "To Catullus")
• Bridges in A Victorian Anthology: "Poor Withered Rose," "I Will Not Let Thee Go," "Upon the Shore," "A Passer-By," "Elegy," "Thou Didst Delight My Eyes," "Awake, My Heart!," "O Youth Whose Hope is High," "So Sweet Love Seemed," "Asian Birds"
• Robert Bridges at PoemHunter (40 poems)
• Robert Bridges at Poetry Nook (201 poems)

Audio/video

• Robert Bridges poems at YouTube

Books

• Works of Robert Bridges at Internet Archive
• Works by Robert Bridges at Project Gutenberg
• Robert Bridges at Amazon.com

About

• Robert Bridges in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Robert Bridges at NNDB
• Robert Bridges at Princeton University
• Robert Bridges at Poets' Graves