“Stanzas for Music” and “The Student’s Portfolio”

One of the most exciting aspects of our collections is the way that Dartmouth students engage with them to create new ideas within the context of the classroom. On Tuesdays this summer, we will publish posts that were originally written by students in Michael Chaney's Literary History survey course during the Winter 2021 term. Each student essay comparatively examines two poems, one from the Dartmouth student newspaper and the other by a canonical American or British author:

Lord Byron’s "Stanzas for Music" (reproduced below) is a sensually emotive account of an experience of a piece of music that capitalizes on natural imagery to convey the bodily effects a work of art induces. This particular poem is most closely related to a state of dreaming– Byron’s stream of consciousness produces an artful depiction of one’s experience of a piece of work that was clearly meant to exist in the dream space from which it was originally birthed.

This analysis will be comparing Byron’s poem with an original work originally published in The Dartmouth in 1839-1840, titled "The Student’s Portfolio". "Portfolio" weaves through the intertwining nature of a student's collection of written work, with detail paid towards the emotional ups and downs of a creation. In this way, the two poems relate to each other: they find common ground within the visceral nature of artful creation. In "Stanzas", the musical piece that is being described as "whose breast is gently heaving,...like the swell of Summer’s ocean" is done an injustice by the author attempting to breathe it into existence as poetic prose. As such, the existence of creative art has value beyond an articulation of poetic prose, such as in an illusory dream state.

Through this train of thought, I will analyze "The Student’s Portfolio" through the concept of a "dream". The OED defines a dream as "a series of images, thoughts, and emotions, often with a story-like quality; Something imagined or invented; a false idea or belief; an illusion, a delusion". The entirety of "Stanzas for Music" feels like a dream: the poem creates an illusion of an abstract world where the "waves lie still and gleaming" and the "midnight moon is weaving" (Byron). Within this world, The dream-state works to value the artistic work beyond the page and simultaneously engage the body within an illusion of experience that is produced by the creative work.

"The Student’s Portfolio" tries to fight the dream state by pulling highly emotive experiences down from their existence in the author's consciousness down onto the paper, while "Stanzas" falls into its bodily response easily, expanding upon natural imagery originally existing within a dream state. "Portfolio" chronicles an author’s thought process through its description of a portfolio, engrossed in both despair and hope within the writing experience. The poem moves from a looser dream state into a grounded release of written work from the author's mind to the page: "Loose thoughts, long pent in sluggish brain... The muse had waked, t'inspire the theme" (O.P.Q). These lines are representations of unstructured thought, until the "thoughts break out in vengeful rage / and frenzy dashes o’er the page, / Till calmed, the passions sink to rest" (O.P.Q). This chronicling of the writing process capitalizes on the illusory and story-like quality of creative writing, however "Portfolio" utilizes the contributions of the muse and sends her away, unlike "Stanzas", which releases itself into the dream state of the muse herself.

Written by Susannah Laster, class of 2022

"Stanzas for Music" by George Gordon, Lord Byron

There be none of Beauty's daughters
With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed ocean's pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lull'd winds seem dreaming:
And the midnight moon is weaving
Her bright chain o'er the deep;
Whose breast is gently heaving,
As an infant's asleep:
So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee;
With a full but soft emotion,
Like the swell of Summer's ocean.