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Joseph Sterling was a poet and antiquary, known as the leading Irish
Spenserian of his generation. His poetry centred on romance. An example of this is Bombarino, a Romance (1768), which was an imitation of
Tasso, Ariosto, and Spenser. A heroic poem on Richard Coeur de Lion
appeared in Poems (Dublin, 1782) as La Gierusalemme soggettita, written in Spenserian
stanza form. Included in the same volume are a section of poems
labelled Odes from the Icelandic, including “The
Scalder” and “The Twilight of the Gods”, an
imitation of the Völuspá section of the
Poetic Edda, which deals with
Ragnarök. This had previously been imitated by
Thomas James Mathias. These were prefaced by a short
“Dissertation”, which spoke of the legend that Odin had
emigrated from Asia and praised the poetry of Thomas Gray. His poems
were republished in London in 1789. In the year of Sterling’s
death, a collection of his odes was published.
Like Thomas Penrose’s poem, this composition is centrally concerned
with the role of the Norse skald in encouraging warriors on the
battlefield. In a “Dissertation”, introducing
Sterling’s Norse-inspired poems, the skald’s voice is
described with a Romantic sense of loss: “The abilities of the
Scalder may be compared to the rays of passing light, when launched out into
the regions of infinite space, from whence they are never to return,
and where their heat and splendour is diffused in vain” (Poems 34). The poem focuses on the rewards of the
afterlife, which the poet brings into being. There are two competing
visions involved. Sterling explains:
TheFlath Innis[also spelledFlaitheas], orNoble Isle, is described; it was the paradise of theCeltæ, and differed in some particulars fromValhalla. In the former the mind was not fatigued with scenes of unvaried carnage; but the imagination was soothed with the most soothing prospects; the sunny landscape and the murmur of the murmurs of the falling stream, were contrasted to the glittering amour, and the shock of encountering heroes. (Poems35)
The preoccupation with the differences between Gothic and Celtic religion was almost certainly inspired by Thomas Percy’s preface to his translation of Northern Antiquities, in which clear fault lines were drawn.
Nathan Drake, an important literary critic, an advocate of vernacular and
Gothic poetry, praised “The Scalder” in the third volume
of Literary Hours (1804). He calls it “a
beautiful Ode”, and Sterling’s poetry collection is referred to as “little known, though certainly meriting
considerable applause”. Drake expresses the hope that the reader will
“procure the volume”, since “he will, I have no
doubt, be highly gratified in the perusal”.Literary Hours: or, Sketches, Critical, Narrative,
and Poetical, vol. 3 (London: Longman et al., 1820),
171.
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