Author: Moody, Elizabeth (dates uncertain; d. 1814)
Title: Poetic Trifles.
Date: 1798
Descriptive and Critical Essay
Elizabeth Moody’s collection, Poetic Trifles, is characterized, formally, by her reliance on rhyme: most of them have an AABB rhyme scheme, while a smaller number use an ABAB rhyme scheme. The length of her poems varies, with the longest being 116 lines long, and her shortest poems being around eight lines. She writes in a dual tone. Toward the beginning, her poems tend to be happy, usually talking about nature and its beauties. Toward the end of her collection, though, her tone changes to despair and loneliness. An example of one of these poems is “Written in the Autumn.” It begins talking about spring as a time of rebirth and joy:
Ah Spring! But now thy beauties grew!
Thy daisy-sprinkled ground;
Thy violets bloom’d, thy zephyrs blew,
Thy songsters warbled round.On every bush, on every thorn,
Progressive life was seen;
Thy infant leaves but newly born,
Disclos’d their tender green.
The poem then moves through the summer season where everything grows and matures, and finally moves into autumn where death and destruction are to be found:
Alas! This leaf that wither’d lies,--
This leaf deform’d and dead!
These eyes beheld its beauties rise,--
Beheld those beauties spread.Admiring saw its rip’ning charms,
Unfolding in the vales;
Protected by parental arms,
And woo’d by vernal gales.Ah me, how chang’d! Its colour flown!
Its moisture dried by frost,
Its fibres shrunk--its vigour gone!
And all its graces lost.Frail as this leaf our life appears,
A passing gale our breath;
Like fate involves our fleeting years,
Age, languor, sickness, death.
In some of her other poems there is a dark tone from beginning to end, as is the case for example with “To a Friend: On her having suffered a dangerous Illness in the Winter, and recovered from it in the Spring” and “A Dialogue Between Beauty and Time.” These poems have a tone of persistent melancholy, but there is at the same time a sense almost of enjoyment, as if she does not genuinely want to get out of her melancholy state.
One of Moody’s most popular poems is “Thoughts on War and Peace,” her long poem on how the world needs to end wars forever. She claims that people need to draw upon their instinctive compassion in order to save lives. Moody talks about the power of government and notes their responsibility for the bloodshed that comes with war, calling for action to end the violence before the world has to endure still more bloodshed.
Overall, Elizabeth Moody’s poems seem cling to a sense of hope. She wants to believe there is good in the world, but with so much death and destruction surrounding her she questions whether there remains any last shred of goodness to cling to as a way of sustaining hope.
Prepared by Lindsey Yank, University of Nebraska, Spring 2018
© Lindsey Yank, 2018