(first published 1929)
Robert Bridges (1844 – 1930)
Language: English
The Testament of Beauty is a long poem in four books, and was the last work of the English Poet Laureate, Robert Bridges. It was first published in 1929. Like The Prelude by William Wordsworth and The Divine Comedy, the poem is a voyage of self-discovery, in which the author seeks to resolve philosophical and spiritual issues raised in his earlier works, particularly in the sonnet sequence, The Growth of Love (1898). It is written in a style that Bridges described as “loose alexandrines”, which are constructed on the basis of syllables rather than accents, a metrical structure developed by the author himself. The work also features Bridges’ idiosyncratic approach to the spelling of English. (Summary by Algy Pug)