Robert Bridges

Bridges on the cover of Time in 1929

Robert Seymour Bridges, OM, (October 23, 1844 – April 21, 1930) was an English poet, holder of the honour of poet laureate from 1913.

Life

Bridges was born in Walmer, Kent, and educated at Eton College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford.^[1] He went on to study medicine at St Bartholomew's Hospital, and intended to practice until the age of forty and then retire to write poetry. However, lung disease forced him to retire in 1882, and from that point he devoted himself to writing and literary research.^[2][3]

Bridges' literary work started long before his retirement, with his first collection of poems being published in 1873. In 1884 he married Monica Waterhouse, daughter of Alfred Waterhouse, and spent the rest of his life in rural seclusion, first at Yattendon, Berkshire, then at Boar's Hill, Oxford, where he died. The poet Elizabeth Daryush was his daughter. ^[4]

Literary Work

Bridges was known for his technical mastery of prosody. In 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 it again in the long philosophical poem "The Testament of Beauty" (1929), for which received the Order of Merit. 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.^[5][6]

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 English composers of the time. Among those to set his poems to music were Hubert Parry, Gustav Holst, and later Gerald Finzi.^[7]

At Corpus Christi College, Bridges became friends with Gerard Manley Hopkins, who is now considered a superior poet but who owes his present fame to Bridges' efforts in arranging the posthumous publication (1916) of his verse.^[8]

Medical career

Robert Bridges OM is the only medical graduate (he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1900) to have held the office of Poet Laureate. Educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford and St Bartholomew's Hospital he practised as a casualty physician at his teaching hospital (where he made a series of highly critical remarks of 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.^[9]

Hymnody

Bridges made an important contribution to hymnody with the publication in 1899 of his Yattendon Hymnal, which he created the Yattendon Hymnal 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)
• O Gladsome Light (Phos Hilaron)
• O Splendor of God's Glory Bright (Ambrose,4th cent.)
• When morning guilds the skies (stanza 3; Katholisches Gesangbuch, 1744)^[10]

Poems

• London Snow

Melancholia

The Evening Darkens Over

Major Works

Poetry

• The Growth of Love (1876;1889)
• Prometheus the Firegiver: A Mask in the Greek Manner (1884)
• Nero (1885)
• Eros and Psyche: A Narrative Poem in Twelve Measures (1885;1894). A story from the Latin of Apuleius.
• Return of Ulysses (1890)
• Shorter Poems, Books I - IV (1890)
• Shorter Poems, Books I - V (1894)
• Ibant Obscuri: An Experiment in the Classical Hexameter
• The Necessity of Poetry (1918)
• October and Other Poems (1920)
• New Verse (1925)
• The Tapestry: Poems (1925)
• The Testament of Beauty (1929;1930)^[13]

Criticism and Essays

• Milton's Prosody, With a Chapter on Accentual Verse (1893).
• Keats (1895)
• The Spirit of Man (1916)
• Collected Essays, Papers, Etc. (1927-36)

Notes

1. ^ Bridges, Robert
2. ^ Hymnody, Robert Bridges
3. ^ Robert Bridges
4. ^ Robert Bridges
5. ^ Robert Seymour Bridges
6. ^ OM
7. ^ Robert Bridges
8. ^ Robert Seymour Bridges
9. ^ Medical career
10. ^ Hymnody
11. ^ Melancholia
12. ^ The Evening Darkens Over
13. ^ Major Works

References

Wikisource has an original article from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica about:

Bridges, Robert

• Bridges, Robert: The Poetical Works of Robert Bridges, Oxford Editions of Standard Authors, Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 1936.
• 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