The Spleen. A Pindaric Ode
The Spleen. A Pindaric Ode
Original Text
Finch, Anne, Countess of Winchelsea. The spleen, a pindarique ode. By a lady. Together with A prospect of death: a pindarique essay. (London: H. Hills, 1709). Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
3 Who never yet thy real cause could find,
4Or fix thee to remain in one continued shape:
5 Still varying thy perplexing form,
6 Now a dead sea thou’lt represent,
7 A calm of stupid discontent,
8Then, dashing on the rocks, wilt rage into a storm.
9 Trembling sometimes, thou dost appear
10 Dissolv’d into a panic fear,
11 On sleep intruding, dost thy shadows spread,
12 Thy gloomy terrors round the silent bed,
13And crowd with boding dreams the melancholy head.
14 Or when the midnight hour is told,
15 And drooping lids thou still dost waking hold,
16 Thy fond delusions cheat the eyes,
17 Before them antic spectres dance,
18 Unusual fires their pointed heads advance,
19 And airy phantoms rise.
21 When Brutus, now beneath his cares oppress’d,
22And all Rome’s fortunes rolling in his breast
23 (Before Philippi’s latest field,
24 Before his fate, did to Octavius yield),
25 Was vanquish’d by the Spleen.
26Falsely the mortal part we blame
27Of our depress’d, and ponderous frame,
28Which, till the first degrading sin
29Let thee, its dull attendant, in,
31 Nor clogg’d the active soul, dispos’d to fly,
32 And range the mansions of its native sky.
33 Nor, whilst in his own heav’n he dwelt,
34 Whilst man his paradise possest,
35 His fertile garden in the fragrant east,
36 And all united odours smelt,
37 No armèd sweets, until thy reign,
38 Could shock the sense, or in the face
39 A flush’d unhandsome colour place.
41 We faint beneath the aromatic pain,
42 Till some offensive scent thy powers appease,
43And pleasure we resign for short and nauseous ease.
44 In ev’ry one thou dost possess,
45 New are thy motions, and thy dress.
46 Now, in some grove a listening friend,
47 Thy false suggestions must attend,
48 Thy whisper’d griefs, thy fancied sorrows hear,
49 Breath’d in a sigh, and witness’d by a tear;
50 Whilst in the light, and vulgar crowd,
51 Thy slaves, more clamorous and loud,
52By laughters unprovok’d thy influence too confess.
54 Which from o’er-heated passions rise
55 In clouds to the attractive brain,
56 Till descending thence again,
57 Through the o’ercast, and showering eyes
58 Upon the husband’s soften’d heart,
59 He the disputed point must yield,
60 Something resign of the contested field;
61 Till lordly man, born to imperial sway,
62 Compounds for peace, to make that right away,
63And woman, arm’d with Spleen, does servilely obey.
64 The fool, to imitate the wits,
65 Complains of thy pretended fits,
66 And dullness, born with him, would lay
67 Upon thy accidental sway,
68 Because sometimes thou dost presume
69 Into the ablest heads to come,
70 That often, men of thoughts refin’d,
71 Impatient of unequal sense,
72 Such slow returns, where they so much dispense,
73Retiring from the crowd, are to thy shades inclin’d.
74 O’er me, alas! thou dost too much prevail,
75 I feel thy force, whilst I against thee rail:
76I feel my verse decay, and my crampt numbers fail.
78 As dark, and terrible as thee,
79 My lines decried, and my employment thought
80 An useless folly, or presumptuous fault,
81 Whilst in the Muses’ paths I stray,
82 Whilst in their groves, and by their secret springs,
83 My hand delights to trace unusual things,
84 And deviates from the known, and common way,
85 Nor will, in fading silks compose
86 Faintly, th’inimitable rose;
87 Fill up an ill-drawn bird, or paint on glass
88 The Sovereign’s blurr’d, and undistinguish’d face,
90 Patron thou art to ev’ry gross abuse;
91 The sullen husband’s feign’d excuse;
92 When the ill humour with his wife he spends,
93And bears recruited wit, and spirits to his friends.
95 As to the glass he still repairs,
96 Pretends but to remove thy cares,
97 Snatch from thy shades one gay, and smiling hour,
98And drown thy kingdom in a purple shower.
99 When the coquet (whom ev’ry fool admires)
100 Would in variety be fair,
101 And changing hastily the scene,
102 From light, impertinent, and vain,
103 Assumes a soft, a melancholy air,
104 And, of her eyes, rebates the wandering fires,
105 The careless posture, and the head reclin’d,
106 The thoughtful, and composèd face,
107 (Proclaiming the withdrawn, the absent mind)
108 Allows the fop more liberty to gaze,
109 Who, gently, for the tender cause enquires;
110 The cause indeed, is a defect in sense,
111Yet is the Spleen alleg’d, and still, the dull pretence.
113 The tricks of thy pernicious stage,
114 Which do the weaker sort engage;
115Worse are the dire effects of thy more powerful charms.
116 By thee, religion, all we know
117 That should enlighten here below,
118 Is veil’d in darkness, and perplext,
119 With anxious doubts, with endless scruples vext,
120And some restraint implied from each perverted text.
121 Whilst touch not, taste not, what is freely giv’n,
122Is but thy niggard voice, disgracing bounteous heav’n.
123 From speech restrain’d, by thy deceits abus’d,
124 To deserts banish’d, or in cells reclus’d,
125 Mistaken votaries to the powers divine,
126 Whilst they a purer sacrifice design,
127Do but the Spleen obey, and worship at thy shrine.
128 In vain, to chase thee ev’ry art we try,
129 In vain, all remedies apply,
132Some pass in vain those bounds, and nobler liquors use.
133 Now, harmony in vain we bring,
134 Inspire the flute, and touch the string;
135 From harmony no help is had,
136 Music but soothes thee, if too sweetly sad,
137And if too light, but turns thee gaily mad.
138 Though the physician’s greatest gains,
139 Although his growing wealth he sees
140 Daily increas’d by ladies’ fees,
141 Yet dost thou baffle all his studious pains:
143 Or, through the well-dissected body, trace
144 The secret, the mysterious ways,
145By which thou dost surprise, and prey upon the mind.
146 Though in the search (too deep for human thought)
147 With unsuccessful toil he wrought,
148Till thinking thee t’ have catch’d, himself by thee was caught,
149 Retain’d thy pris’ner, thy acknowledg’d slave,
150And sunk beneath thy chain to a lamented grave.
Notes
1] Spleen: A melancholic disorder of obscure etiology and highly variable presentation. Spleen was generally thought to result from an obstruction in the organ after which it was named, which most physicians until the mid-eighteenth century believed was tasked with the excretion of black bile, the humour associated with feelings of melancholy; when the spleen is obstructed, physicians held, excess black bile accumulates in the blood or rises from the spleen, in gaseous form (“vapours”), to the brain, depressing the sufferer’s energy and mood. This humoral explanation was promoted above all by Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), with which Finch seems to have been familiar. Spleen was considered to be largely a disorder of women (cf. line 53 ff., note to line 53, and line 140), though men were thought to be occasionally susceptible to the affliction; many physicians attributed this difference to the “fact” that—as Thomas Sydenham, author of Observationes Medicae, a standard medical textbook of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, wrote—women are “endowed by Nature with a more fine and delicate habit of body, as being destined to a life of more refinement and care.” See also the sprite Umbriel's journey to the "Cave of Spleen" in Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock Canto IV lines 11-88. Back to Line
2] Proteus: In Greek mythology, a sea-god possessed of prophetic power. Proteus could change his shape to avoid answering questions concerning his knowledge of things past and future (as witnessed during his confrontation with Menelaus, recounted in Odyssey IV). Proteus would, however, answer those who could capture him. Back to Line
20] monstrous vision…yield: The Battle of Philippi (42 B.C.E.) was the final battle of the Roman Civil War, which followed upon the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C.E. The battle pitted the Republican forces, led by Caesar’s assassins, Brutus and Cassius, against the Caesarians, led by Marc Antony and Octavian, Julius Caesar’s adopted son (later the emperor Caesar Augustus). As reported by Plutarch, the ghost of Julius Caesar appeared in Brutus’s tent at Sardis and promised to visit Brutus again at Philippi. Shakespeare dramatizes the Sardis apparition in Julius Caesar, IV, iii; at V, v, 20, Brutus, defeated by Octavian’s forces, reports that he saw the ghost again “this last night here in Philippi fields.” Back to Line
30] the other: i.e., the immortal part, the soul. Back to Line
40] jonquille: daffodil (French). Back to Line
53] vapours: “A morbid condition supposed to be caused by the presence of such exhalations; depression of spirits, hypochondria, hysteria, or other nervous disorder. Now archaic. (Common c1665–1750.)” (OED, vapour, n., 3b. See also sense 3c for “the vapours.”) Eighteenth-century physicians frequently associated spleen with vapours and sometimes used the two terms interchangeably to refer to melancholic disorders. Back to Line
77] black jaundice: Analogous to the more common yellow jaundice, caused by an obstruction of the liver, black jaundice, thought to be a symptom of spleen, consists in the “change of the skin of the whol body into black,” according to a 1657 translation of a medical textbook written by Joannes Jonstonus. The black colour was believed to derive from the diffusion of black bile, released from the spleen, throughout the body (cf. note to line 1). Back to Line
89] The threatening angel, and the speaking ass: Cf. the story of Balaam’s ass in Numbers 22. Balak, King of Moab, summons the prophet Balaam to curse the Israelites, whose recent incursions into Amorite territory pose a threat to Balak’s kingdom. Balaam sets off on his donkey, but the route is thrice blocked by a “threatening angel” visible to the donkey but not to Balaam. When Balaam beats the donkey for veering off the road, the donkey, to whom God gives the power of speech, complains of his ill-treatment. After the third such beating, God allows Balaam to see the angel, and commands him to say only what God will permit him to say over the Israelites—that is, to bless rather than curse them. Numerous paintings depict this scene, the most famous being by Rembrandt. Back to Line
94] Bacchus: The Roman god of wine, equivalent to the Greek Dionysus. Back to Line
112] fantastic: “In mod. use, of alleged reasons, fears, etc.: Perversely or irrationally imagined” (OED, fantastic, adj. and n., A.1b.). Back to Line
130] Indian leaf: i.e., tea. Back to Line
131] parch’d eastern berry: i.e., the coffee bean. Back to Line
142] Lower: Richard Lower, 1631–91, prominent physician, known particularly for his work in physiology and anatomy. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1701
RPO poem Editors
Malcolm Woodland, Alexander Lynch
Rhyme
Form