Death, be not proud, though some have called theeMighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrowDie not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,Much pleasure: then from thee much more must flow;And soonest our best men do with thee go—Rest of their bones, and souls' delivery.Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,And poppy or charms can make us sleep as wellAnd better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou then?One short sleep past, we wake eternally,And death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die.
Death, be not proud, though some have called theeMighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrowDie not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,Much pleasure: then from thee much more must flow;And soonest our best men do with thee go—Rest of their bones, and souls' delivery.Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,And poppy or charms can make us sleep as wellAnd better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou then?One short sleep past, we wake eternally,And death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die.
(John Donne:Holy Sonnets, X. 1635.)
Donne's series of "Holy Sonnets" was one of the few Elizabethan sequences, or cycles, which dealt with other than amatory subjects. The seven sonnets of the series calledLa Coronaare bound together into a "crown of sonnets,"—an Italian fashion, according to which the first line of each sonnet is the same as the last of the sonnet preceding, and the last line of the last sonnet the same as the first line of the first.
When I consider how my light is spentEre half my days, in this dark world and wide,And that one talent which is death to hideLodged with me useless, though my soul more bentTo serve therewith my Maker, and presentMy true account, lest He returning chide,—Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?I fondly ask:—But patience, to preventThat murmur, soon replies: God doth not needEither man's work, or His own gifts; who bestBear His mild yoke, they serve Him best: His stateIs kingly; thousands at His bidding speedAnd post o'er land and ocean without rest:—They also serve who only stand and wait.
When I consider how my light is spentEre half my days, in this dark world and wide,And that one talent which is death to hideLodged with me useless, though my soul more bentTo serve therewith my Maker, and presentMy true account, lest He returning chide,—Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?I fondly ask:—But patience, to preventThat murmur, soon replies: God doth not needEither man's work, or His own gifts; who bestBear His mild yoke, they serve Him best: His stateIs kingly; thousands at His bidding speedAnd post o'er land and ocean without rest:—They also serve who only stand and wait.
(Milton:On his Blindness. ab. 1655.)
Milton learned the sonnet direct from the Italian, and wrote five in that language. While following the Italian rime-schemes, however, he was not careful to observe any division between octave and sestet. Like Donne, he turned the sonnet to other subjects than that of love, or—in Landor's words—
"He caught the sonnet from the dainty handOf Love, who cried to lose it, and he gaveThe notes to Glory."
"He caught the sonnet from the dainty handOf Love, who cried to lose it, and he gaveThe notes to Glory."
(To Lamartine.)
Compare, also, Wordsworth's saying that in Milton's hand
"The Thing became a trumpet, whence he blewSoul-animating strains—alas, too few!"
"The Thing became a trumpet, whence he blewSoul-animating strains—alas, too few!"
Besides the eighteen English sonnets in regular form, Milton wrote a "tailed," or "caudated," sonnet, following an Italian fashion,—"On the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament." "He intended it," says Masson, "to be what may be called an Anti-Presbyterian and Pro-Toleration Sonnet; but by going beyond fourteen lines, converted it into what the Italians called a 'sonnet with a tail.'" (Globe ed., p. 440.) The "tail" rimescfffgg.
Deem not devoid of elegance the sage,By Fancy's genuine feelings unbeguiled,Of painful pedantry the poring child,Who turns, of these proud domes, th' historic page,Now sunk by Time, and Henry's fiercer rage.Think'st thou the warbling Muses never smiledOn his lone hours? Ingenuous views engageHis thoughts, on themes, unclassic falsely styled,Intent. While cloistered Piety displaysHer mouldering roll, the piercing eye exploresNew manners, and the pomp of elder days,Whence culls the pensive bard his pictured stores.Nor rough nor barren are the winding waysOf hoar Antiquity, but strown with flowers.
Deem not devoid of elegance the sage,By Fancy's genuine feelings unbeguiled,Of painful pedantry the poring child,Who turns, of these proud domes, th' historic page,Now sunk by Time, and Henry's fiercer rage.Think'st thou the warbling Muses never smiledOn his lone hours? Ingenuous views engageHis thoughts, on themes, unclassic falsely styled,Intent. While cloistered Piety displaysHer mouldering roll, the piercing eye exploresNew manners, and the pomp of elder days,Whence culls the pensive bard his pictured stores.Nor rough nor barren are the winding waysOf hoar Antiquity, but strown with flowers.
(Thomas Warton:In a Blank Leaf of Dugdale's 'Monasticon.'ab. 1775.)
After Milton, the sonnet fell into disuse for a century. "Walsh," says Mr. Gosse, "is the author of the only sonnet written in English between Milton's, in 1658, and Warton's, about 1750." (Ward'sEnglish Poets, vol. iii. p. 7.) See, however, that of Gray on West, written in 1742, quoted p.295, below. To the Warton brothers, pioneers in so many ways of the romantic revival, chief credit is given for the revival of the sonnet in the eighteenth century. Other sonneteers of the period were William Mason, Thomas Edwards, Benjamin Stillingfleet, and Thomas Russell (see Seccombe'sAge of Johnson, pp. 254, 255, and Beers'sEnglish Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 160, 161).
O Time! who know'st a lenient hand to laySoftest on sorrow's wound, and slowly thence(Lulling to sad repose the weary sense)The faint pang stealest, unperceived, away;On thee I rest my only hope at last,And think when thou hast dried the bitter tearThat flows in vain o'er all my soul held dear,I may look back on every sorrow past,And meet life's peaceful evening with a smile.As some lone bird, at day's departing hour,Sings in the sunbeam, of the transient showerForgetful, though its wings are wet the while:Yet ah! how much must that poor heart endureWhich hopes from thee, and thee alone, a cure!
O Time! who know'st a lenient hand to laySoftest on sorrow's wound, and slowly thence(Lulling to sad repose the weary sense)The faint pang stealest, unperceived, away;On thee I rest my only hope at last,And think when thou hast dried the bitter tearThat flows in vain o'er all my soul held dear,I may look back on every sorrow past,And meet life's peaceful evening with a smile.As some lone bird, at day's departing hour,Sings in the sunbeam, of the transient showerForgetful, though its wings are wet the while:Yet ah! how much must that poor heart endureWhich hopes from thee, and thee alone, a cure!
(William Lisle Bowles:To Time. 1789.)
Bowles (1762-1850) wrote numerous sonnets, and was influential in carrying on the movement begun by the Wartons. His sonnets were admired, in particular, by Coleridge and Wordsworth, the former poet dedicating to him a sonnet beginning:
"My heart has thanked thee, Bowles! for those soft strainsWhose sadness soothes me."
"My heart has thanked thee, Bowles! for those soft strainsWhose sadness soothes me."
His sonnets were, however, neglectful of the regular Italian structure, so that under his influence, as Leigh Hunt observed, "the illegitimate order ... became such a favorite with lovers of easy writing who could string fourteen lines together, that ... it continued to fill the press with heaps of bad verses, till the genius of Wordsworth succeeded in restoring the right system." (Essay on the Sonnet, p. 85.) But see the notes on Wordsworth's sonnets, p.280, below.
Mary! I want a lyre with other strings,Such aid from Heaven as some have feigned they drew,An eloquence scarce given to mortals, newAnd undebased by praise of meaner things,That, ere through age or woe I shed my wings,I may record thy worth with honor due,In verse as musical as thou art true,And that immortalizes whom it sings.But thou hast little need. There is a bookBy Seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light,On which the eyes of God not rarely look,A chronicle of actions just and bright:There all thy deeds, my faithful Mary, shine,And, since thou own'st that praise, I spare thee mine.
Mary! I want a lyre with other strings,Such aid from Heaven as some have feigned they drew,An eloquence scarce given to mortals, newAnd undebased by praise of meaner things,That, ere through age or woe I shed my wings,I may record thy worth with honor due,In verse as musical as thou art true,And that immortalizes whom it sings.But thou hast little need. There is a bookBy Seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light,On which the eyes of God not rarely look,A chronicle of actions just and bright:There all thy deeds, my faithful Mary, shine,And, since thou own'st that praise, I spare thee mine.
(Cowper:To Mrs. Unwin. 1793.)
Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;And hermits are contented with their cells;And students with their pensive citadels;Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,High as the highest peak of Furness Fells,Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells.In truth the prison unto which we doomOurselves no prison is; and hence to me,In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be boundWithin the sonnet's scanty plot of ground,Pleased if some souls (for such there needs must be)Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,Should find brief solace there, as I have found.
Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;And hermits are contented with their cells;And students with their pensive citadels;Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,High as the highest peak of Furness Fells,Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells.In truth the prison unto which we doomOurselves no prison is; and hence to me,In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be boundWithin the sonnet's scanty plot of ground,Pleased if some souls (for such there needs must be)Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,Should find brief solace there, as I have found.
(Wordsworth:The Sonnet. 1806.)
Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,Mindless of its just honors; with this keyShakspere unlocked his heart; the melodyOf this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;With it Camoens soothed an exile's grief;The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leafAmid the cypress with which Dante crownedHis visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-landTo struggle through dark ways; and, when a dampFell round the path of Milton, in his handThe Thing became a trumpet, whence he blewSoul-animating strains—alas, too few!
Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,Mindless of its just honors; with this keyShakspere unlocked his heart; the melodyOf this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;With it Camoens soothed an exile's grief;The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leafAmid the cypress with which Dante crownedHis visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-landTo struggle through dark ways; and, when a dampFell round the path of Milton, in his handThe Thing became a trumpet, whence he blewSoul-animating strains—alas, too few!
(Wordsworth:Scorn not the Sonnet. 1827.)
The World is too much with us; late and soon,Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;Little we see in Nature that is ours;We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,The winds that will be howling at all hoursAnd are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers,For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather beA Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,—So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
The World is too much with us; late and soon,Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;Little we see in Nature that is ours;We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,The winds that will be howling at all hoursAnd are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers,For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather beA Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,—So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
(Wordsworth:The World is too much with us. 1806.)
Wordsworth's complaint as to the number of Milton's sonnets ("alas, too few!") certainly cannot be applied to his own. They number about five hundred, ranking him as the most prolific English sonneteer. These include some of the finest sonnets in the language, and very many of admittedly indifferent quality. Mr. Swinburne regards his sonnets as on the whole "the best out of sight" in our poetry. In general he followed the Italian model, but with very great liberty. He not only practised great variety of rime-arrangement in the sestet, but frequently altered the scheme of the octave to such forms asabbaacca; see, for example, the specimen beginning "Scorn not the Sonnet." Wordsworth also showed no regard for the careful division of thought between octave and sestet. Indeed in a letter to Dyce, in 1833, he said that he regarded the sonnet not as a piece of architecture, but as "an orbicular body,—a sphere or a dew-drop." (Works, ed. Knight, vol. xi. p. 232.) Its excellence seemed to him to consist mainly in a "pervading sense of intense unity." Nevertheless, he admitted that "a sonnet will often be found excellent, where the beginning, the middle, and the end are distinctly marked, and also where it is distinctly separatedintotwoparts, to which, as I before observed, the strict Italian model, as they write it, is favorable."
Mysterious Night! when our first parent knewThee from report divine, and heard thy name,Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,This glorious canopy of light and blue?Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,Hesperus with the host of heaven came,And lo! creation widened in man's view.Who could have thought such darkness lay concealedWithin thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed,That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?Why do we, then, shun death with anxious strife?If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life?
Mysterious Night! when our first parent knewThee from report divine, and heard thy name,Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,This glorious canopy of light and blue?Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,Hesperus with the host of heaven came,And lo! creation widened in man's view.Who could have thought such darkness lay concealedWithin thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed,That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?Why do we, then, shun death with anxious strife?If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life?
(Joseph Blanco White:To Night. ab. 1825. InThe Book of the Sonnet, i. 258.)
This famous sonnet was called by Coleridge "the best in the English language." He seems, however, to have been led to this opinion rather by the thought than the form.
I met a traveler from an antique land,Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. Near them on the sand,Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frownAnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold commandTell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed;And on the pedestal these words appear:"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,The lone and level sands stretch far away.
I met a traveler from an antique land,Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. Near them on the sand,Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frownAnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold commandTell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed;And on the pedestal these words appear:"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,The lone and level sands stretch far away.
(Shelley:Ozymandias of Egypt. 1817.)
Shelley wrote but few sonnets, and all but one (To the Nile) are irregular in structure. The rime-scheme of the present specimen is, of course, wholly eccentric.
The poetry of earth is never dead:When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,And hide in cooling trees, a voice will runFrom hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead:That is the Grasshopper's; he takes the leadIn summer luxury; he has never doneWith his delights, for, when tired out with fun,He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.The poetry of earth is ceasing never:On a lone winter evening, when the frostHas wrought a silence, from the stove there shrillsThe Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,And seems to one in drowsiness half lostThe Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.
The poetry of earth is never dead:When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,And hide in cooling trees, a voice will runFrom hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead:That is the Grasshopper's; he takes the leadIn summer luxury; he has never doneWith his delights, for, when tired out with fun,He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.The poetry of earth is ceasing never:On a lone winter evening, when the frostHas wrought a silence, from the stove there shrillsThe Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,And seems to one in drowsiness half lostThe Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.
(Keats:The Grasshopper and Cricket. 1817.)
Keats's sonnets are for the most part regular in both rime-scheme and bipartite structure; but a number of the posthumous sonnets are in the English form. The present specimen (which competes with the more familiar sonnet onChapman's Homerfor the chief place among those of Keats) is a particularly good example of the bipartite structure and its organic relation to the thought of the sonnet.
Amazing monster! that, for aught I know,With the first sight of thee didst make our raceForever stare! O flat and shocking face,Grimly divided from the breast below!Thou that on dry land horribly dost goWith a split body and most ridiculous pace,Prong after prong, disgracer of all grace,Long-useless-finned, haired, upright, unwet, slow!O breather of unbreathable, sword-sharp air,How canst exist? How bear thyself, thou dryAnd dreary sloth! What particle canst thou shareOf the only blessed life, the watery?I sometimes see of ye an actualpairGo by, linked fin by fin! most odiously.
Amazing monster! that, for aught I know,With the first sight of thee didst make our raceForever stare! O flat and shocking face,Grimly divided from the breast below!Thou that on dry land horribly dost goWith a split body and most ridiculous pace,Prong after prong, disgracer of all grace,Long-useless-finned, haired, upright, unwet, slow!O breather of unbreathable, sword-sharp air,How canst exist? How bear thyself, thou dryAnd dreary sloth! What particle canst thou shareOf the only blessed life, the watery?I sometimes see of ye an actualpairGo by, linked fin by fin! most odiously.
(Leigh Hunt:The Fish to the Man. 1836.)
If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchangeAnd be all to me? Shall I never missHome-talk and blessing, and the common kissThat comes to each in turn, nor count it strange,When I look up, to drop on a new rangeOf walls and floors,—another home than this?Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which isFill'd by dead eyes, too tender to know change?That's hardest! If to conquer love, has tried,To conquer grief tries more, as all things prove:For grief indeed is love, and grief beside.Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love—Yet love me—wilt thou? Open thine heart wide,And fold within the wet wings of thy dove.
If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchangeAnd be all to me? Shall I never missHome-talk and blessing, and the common kissThat comes to each in turn, nor count it strange,When I look up, to drop on a new rangeOf walls and floors,—another home than this?Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which isFill'd by dead eyes, too tender to know change?That's hardest! If to conquer love, has tried,To conquer grief tries more, as all things prove:For grief indeed is love, and grief beside.Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love—Yet love me—wilt thou? Open thine heart wide,And fold within the wet wings of thy dove.
(Elizabeth Barrett Browning:Sonnets from the Portuguese, xxxv. 1850.)
The forty-fourSonnets from the Portuguese(the title, of course, being purely fanciful) constitute one of the chief sonnet-sequences of the modern period. While true to the Italian rime-structure, Mrs. Browning cannot be said to have treated the sonnet either as a two-part poem or as a unit. Only three of the series, says Professor Corson (the first, fourth, and thirteenth), "can be said to realize with any distinctness the idea and the peculiar artistic effect of the sonnet proper." Hence while calling them "the most beautiful love-poems in the language," he thinks "they cannot be classed as sonnets." (Primer of English Verse, pp. 175, 176.)
A Sonnet is a moment's monument,—Memorial from the Soul's eternityTo one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,Of its own arduous fulness reverent:Carve it in ivory or in ebony,As Day or Night may rule; and let Time seeIts flowering crest impearled and orient.A sonnet is a coin: its face revealsThe soul,—its converse, to what Power 'tis due:—Whether for tribute to the august appealsOf Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath,In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.
A Sonnet is a moment's monument,—Memorial from the Soul's eternityTo one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,Of its own arduous fulness reverent:Carve it in ivory or in ebony,As Day or Night may rule; and let Time seeIts flowering crest impearled and orient.A sonnet is a coin: its face revealsThe soul,—its converse, to what Power 'tis due:—Whether for tribute to the august appealsOf Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath,In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.
(Rossetti: Sonnet precedingThe House of Life. 1881.)
When do I see thee most, beloved one?When in the light the spirits of mine eyesBefore thy face, their altar, solemnizeThe worship of that Love through thee made known?Or when in the dusk hours (we two alone),Close-kissed and eloquent of still repliesThy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,And my soul only sees thy soul its own?O love, my love! if I no more should seeThyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,—How then should sound upon Life's darkening slopeThe ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,The wind of Death's imperishable wing?
When do I see thee most, beloved one?When in the light the spirits of mine eyesBefore thy face, their altar, solemnizeThe worship of that Love through thee made known?Or when in the dusk hours (we two alone),Close-kissed and eloquent of still repliesThy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,And my soul only sees thy soul its own?O love, my love! if I no more should seeThyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,—How then should sound upon Life's darkening slopeThe ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,The wind of Death's imperishable wing?
(Rossetti:The House of Life: Sonnet iv.Lovesight. 1870.)
The sonnets of Rossetti are undoubtedly the most perfect representatives of the Italian form in English poetry of the nineteenth century, andThe House of Life(in 101 sonnets) is probably to be regarded as the most important sonnet-sequence since the Elizabethan age. The bipartite character of Rossetti's sonnets is marked, in editions of his poems, by the printing of the octave and sestet with a space between them.
They rose to where their sovran eagle sails,They kept their faith, their freedom, on the height,Chaste, frugal, savage, armed by day and nightAgainst the Turk; whose inroad nowhere scalesTheir headlong passes, but his footstep fails,And red with blood the Crescent reels from fightBefore their dauntless hundreds, in prone flightBy thousands down the crags and through the vales.O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throneOf Freedom! warriors beating back the swarmOf Turkish Islam for five hundred years,Great Tsernagora! never since thine ownBlack ridges drew the cloud and brake the stormHas breathed a race of mightier mountaineers.
They rose to where their sovran eagle sails,They kept their faith, their freedom, on the height,Chaste, frugal, savage, armed by day and nightAgainst the Turk; whose inroad nowhere scalesTheir headlong passes, but his footstep fails,And red with blood the Crescent reels from fightBefore their dauntless hundreds, in prone flightBy thousands down the crags and through the vales.O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throneOf Freedom! warriors beating back the swarmOf Turkish Islam for five hundred years,Great Tsernagora! never since thine ownBlack ridges drew the cloud and brake the stormHas breathed a race of mightier mountaineers.
(Tennyson:Montenegro. 1877.)
It is curious that the two chief representatives of English poetry of the Victorian period, Tennyson and Browning, should neither of them have given much attention to the sonnet nor have achieved any notable success in the form. Among Tennyson's poems there are some seventeen sonnets, of which the present specimen was considered by the poet to be the best. It represents a common form of the bipartite structure, where the octave is a narrative, and the sestet a comment upon what has been narrated. In the following specimen, from Matthew Arnold, the structure is similar. Lentzner quotes theEast London, in his monograph on the English sonnet, as a case where the octave represents the thought in particular, the sestet in the abstract; in other cases the order is the reverse.
'Twas August, and the fierce sun overheadSmote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green,And the pale weaver, through his window seenIn Spitalfields, looked thrice dispirited.I met a preacher there I knew, and said:'Ill and o'er-worked, how fare you in this scene?''Bravely!' said he, 'for I of late have beenMuch cheered with thoughts of Christ, the Living Bread!'O human soul! so long as thou canst soSet up a mark of everlasting lightAbove the howling senses' ebb and flow,To cheer thee and to right thee if thou roam,Not with lost toil thou laborest through the night!Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home.
'Twas August, and the fierce sun overheadSmote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green,And the pale weaver, through his window seenIn Spitalfields, looked thrice dispirited.I met a preacher there I knew, and said:'Ill and o'er-worked, how fare you in this scene?''Bravely!' said he, 'for I of late have beenMuch cheered with thoughts of Christ, the Living Bread!'O human soul! so long as thou canst soSet up a mark of everlasting lightAbove the howling senses' ebb and flow,To cheer thee and to right thee if thou roam,Not with lost toil thou laborest through the night!Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home.
(Matthew Arnold:East London. 1867.)
"Why?" Because all I haply can and do,All that I am now, all I hope to be,—Whence comes it save from fortune setting freeBody and soul the purpose to pursue,God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,These shall I bid men—each in his degreeAlso God-guided—bear, and gayly too?But little do or can the best of us:That little is achieved through Liberty.Who, then, dares hold, emancipated thus—His fellow shall continue bound? Not I.Who live, love, labor freely, nor discussA brother's right to freedom. That is "Why."
"Why?" Because all I haply can and do,All that I am now, all I hope to be,—Whence comes it save from fortune setting freeBody and soul the purpose to pursue,God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,These shall I bid men—each in his degreeAlso God-guided—bear, and gayly too?But little do or can the best of us:That little is achieved through Liberty.Who, then, dares hold, emancipated thus—His fellow shall continue bound? Not I.Who live, love, labor freely, nor discussA brother's right to freedom. That is "Why."
(Browning:Why I am a Liberal. 1885.)
Browning's sonnets are few in number, mostly occasional, and none of them can be considered notable. For a study of them, see the article by Lentzner inAnglia, vol. xi. p. 500. Dr. Lentzner includes nine in his list, not all of which are included in Browning's collected poems. Three are so closely connected as practically to form a poem in three stanzas (appended toJochanan Hakkadosh, 1883).
One saith: the whole world is a ComedyPlayed for the mirth of God upon his throne,Whereof the hidden meanings will be knownWhen Michael's trumpet thrills through earth and sea.Fate is the dramaturge; NecessityAllots the parts; the scenes, by Nature shown,Embrace each element and every zone,Ordered with infinite variety.Anothersaith: no calm-eyed SophoclesIndites the tragedy of human doom,But some cold scornful Aristophanes,Whose zanies gape and gibber in thick gloom,While nightingales, shrill 'mid the shivering trees,Jar on the silence of the neighboring tomb.
One saith: the whole world is a ComedyPlayed for the mirth of God upon his throne,Whereof the hidden meanings will be knownWhen Michael's trumpet thrills through earth and sea.Fate is the dramaturge; NecessityAllots the parts; the scenes, by Nature shown,Embrace each element and every zone,Ordered with infinite variety.Anothersaith: no calm-eyed SophoclesIndites the tragedy of human doom,But some cold scornful Aristophanes,Whose zanies gape and gibber in thick gloom,While nightingales, shrill 'mid the shivering trees,Jar on the silence of the neighboring tomb.
(John Addington Symonds: fromSonnets on the Thought of Death. ab. 1880.)
Yon silvery billows breaking on the beachFall back in foam beneath the star-shine clear,The while my rhymes are murmuring in your earA restless lore like that the billows teach;For on these sonnet-waves my soul would reachFrom its own depths, and rest within you, dear,As, through the billowy voices yearning here,Great Nature strives to find a human speech.A sonnet is a wave of melody:From heaving waters of the impassioned soulA billow of tidal music one and wholeFlows in the octave; then, returning free,Its ebbing surges in the sestet rollBack to the deeps of Life's tumultuous sea.
Yon silvery billows breaking on the beachFall back in foam beneath the star-shine clear,The while my rhymes are murmuring in your earA restless lore like that the billows teach;For on these sonnet-waves my soul would reachFrom its own depths, and rest within you, dear,As, through the billowy voices yearning here,Great Nature strives to find a human speech.A sonnet is a wave of melody:From heaving waters of the impassioned soulA billow of tidal music one and wholeFlows in the octave; then, returning free,Its ebbing surges in the sestet rollBack to the deeps of Life's tumultuous sea.
(Theodore Watts-Dunton:The Sonnet's Voice; a Metrical Lesson by the Sea-shore.Athenæum, Sept. 17, 1881.)
The "sonnet on the sonnet" has become so familiar in recent times that a volume of such sonnets has been compiled, and a writer of humorous verse has satirized the fashion in a "Sonnet on the Sonnet on the Sonnet." Doubtless the two specimens quoted from Wordsworth lead all others of the class; but the present specimen is an interesting attempt to represent the characteristic metrical expressiveness of the form.
Oft have I seen at some cathedral doorA laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,Lay down his burden, and with reverent feetEnter, and cross himself, and on the floorKneel to repeat his Paternoster o'er;Far off the noises of the world retreat;The loud vociferations of the streetBecome an undistinguishable roar.So, as I enter here from day to day,And leave my burden at this minster gate,Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,The tumult of the time disconsolateTo inarticulate murmurs dies away,While the eternal ages watch and wait.
Oft have I seen at some cathedral doorA laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,Lay down his burden, and with reverent feetEnter, and cross himself, and on the floorKneel to repeat his Paternoster o'er;Far off the noises of the world retreat;The loud vociferations of the streetBecome an undistinguishable roar.So, as I enter here from day to day,And leave my burden at this minster gate,Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,The tumult of the time disconsolateTo inarticulate murmurs dies away,While the eternal ages watch and wait.
(Longfellow:Sonnets on the Divina Commedia, i. 1864.)
Caliph, I did thee wrong. I hailed thee late"Abdul the Damned," and would recall my word.It merged thee with the unillustrious herdWho crowd the approaches to the infernal gate—Spirits gregarious, equal in their stateAs is the innumerable ocean bird,Gannet or gull, whose wandering plaint is heardOn Ailsa or Iona desolate.For, in a world where cruel deeds abound,The merely damned are legion: with such soulsIs not each hollow and cranny of Tophet crammed?Thou with the brightest of Hell's aureolesDost shine supreme, incomparably crowned,Immortally, beyond all mortals, damned.
Caliph, I did thee wrong. I hailed thee late"Abdul the Damned," and would recall my word.It merged thee with the unillustrious herdWho crowd the approaches to the infernal gate—Spirits gregarious, equal in their stateAs is the innumerable ocean bird,Gannet or gull, whose wandering plaint is heardOn Ailsa or Iona desolate.For, in a world where cruel deeds abound,The merely damned are legion: with such soulsIs not each hollow and cranny of Tophet crammed?Thou with the brightest of Hell's aureolesDost shine supreme, incomparably crowned,Immortally, beyond all mortals, damned.
(William Watson:To the Sultan, inThe Year of Shame. 1897.)
Mr. William Archer says of Mr. Watson's political sonnets, that the form becomes in his hands "a weapon like the sling of David. In the octave he whirls it round and round with ever-gathering momentum, and in the sestet sends his scorn or rebuke singing through the air, arrow-straight to its mark." (Poets of the Younger Generation, p. 503.)
From Tuskane came my Ladies worthy race:Faire Florence was sometyme her auncient seate:The Western yle, whose pleasaunt shore dothe faceWilde Cambers clifs, did geve her lively heate:Fostered she was with milke of Irishe brest:Her sire, an Erle; her dame, of princes blood.From tender yeres, in Britain she doth rest,With kinges childe, where she tasteth costly food.Honsdon did first present her to mine yien:Bright is her hewe, and Geraldine she hight.Hampton me taught to wishe her first for mine:And Windsor, alas, dothe chase me from her sight.Her beauty of kind, her vertues from above.Happy is he that can obtaine her love.
From Tuskane came my Ladies worthy race:Faire Florence was sometyme her auncient seate:The Western yle, whose pleasaunt shore dothe faceWilde Cambers clifs, did geve her lively heate:Fostered she was with milke of Irishe brest:Her sire, an Erle; her dame, of princes blood.From tender yeres, in Britain she doth rest,With kinges childe, where she tasteth costly food.Honsdon did first present her to mine yien:Bright is her hewe, and Geraldine she hight.Hampton me taught to wishe her first for mine:And Windsor, alas, dothe chase me from her sight.Her beauty of kind, her vertues from above.Happy is he that can obtaine her love.
(Earl of Surrey:Description and praise of his love Geraldine. In Tottel'sSongs and Sonnets, p. 9. Pub. 1557.)
Surrey experimented with the Italian sonnet as it had been introduced into England by his master Wyatt, but soon devised a variation from the Italian form, and wrote a majority of his sonnets in the new English form (nine out of the sixteen which are printed in Tottel's Miscellany). This new form is divided, not into octave and sestet, but into three quatrains, with alternate rime, and a couplet. It produces, therefore, an effect quite different from that of the legitimate Italian sonnet, the couplet atthe end giving it a more epigrammatic structure. Surrey's form seems more consonant with common English taste for simplicity of rime-structure, and, besides being honored by its adoption by Shakspere, has remained a favorite side by side with the more "correct" original.[37]
Come, Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,The indifferent judge between the high and low;With shield of proof shield me from out the pressOf those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw.O make me in those civil wars to cease;I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,A chamber deaf of noise and blind of light,A rosy garland and a weary head:And if these things, as being thine in right,Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.
Come, Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,The indifferent judge between the high and low;With shield of proof shield me from out the pressOf those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw.O make me in those civil wars to cease;I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,A chamber deaf of noise and blind of light,A rosy garland and a weary head:And if these things, as being thine in right,Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.
(Sidney:Astrophel and Stella, xxxix. ab. 1580.)
Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,Brother to Death, in silent darkness born,Relieve my languish, and restore the light;With dark forgetting of my care return.And let the day be time enough to mournThe shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth:Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn,Without the torment of the night's untruth.Cease, dreams, the images of day-desires,To model forth the passions of to-morrow;Never let rising Sun approve you liars,To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow:Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain,And never wake to feel the day's disdain.
Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,Brother to Death, in silent darkness born,Relieve my languish, and restore the light;With dark forgetting of my care return.And let the day be time enough to mournThe shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth:Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn,Without the torment of the night's untruth.Cease, dreams, the images of day-desires,To model forth the passions of to-morrow;Never let rising Sun approve you liars,To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow:Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain,And never wake to feel the day's disdain.
(Samuel Daniel:Care-charmer Sleep. 1592.)
Daniel was one of the most skilful of the Elizabethans in the use of the English form of the sonnet. The greater number of hisSonnets to Deliaare of this type. The subject of the present sonnet was a fashionable one in the sixteenth century (compare Sidney's, quoted above).
Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part,—Nay I have done, you get no more of me;And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,That thus so cleanly I myself can free;Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,And when we meet at any time again,Be it not seen in either of our browsThat we one jot of former love retain.Now at the last gasp of love's latest breath,When, his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,When faith is kneeling by his bed of death,And innocence is closing up his eyes,—Now if thou would'st, when all have given him over,From death to life thou might'st him yet recover!
Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part,—Nay I have done, you get no more of me;And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,That thus so cleanly I myself can free;Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,And when we meet at any time again,Be it not seen in either of our browsThat we one jot of former love retain.Now at the last gasp of love's latest breath,When, his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,When faith is kneeling by his bed of death,And innocence is closing up his eyes,—Now if thou would'st, when all have given him over,From death to life thou might'st him yet recover!
(Drayton:Love's Farewell. 1594.)
Rossetti called this sonnet "perhaps the best in the language." Drayton's sonnet-sequence, theIdea, follows the Shaksperian form; and the present specimen illustrates how the important division of this type of sonnet is between the quatrains and the final couplet.
One day I wrote her name upon the strand;But came the waves and washed it away:Again I wrote it with a second hand,But came the tide and made my pains his prey.Vain man! said she, that dost in vain essayA mortal thing so to immortalize;For I myself shall like to this decay,And eke my name be wiped out likewise.Not so (quoth I); let baser things deviseTo die in dust, but you shall live by fame;My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,And in the heavens write your glorious name,—Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,Our love shall live, and later life renew.
One day I wrote her name upon the strand;But came the waves and washed it away:Again I wrote it with a second hand,But came the tide and made my pains his prey.Vain man! said she, that dost in vain essayA mortal thing so to immortalize;For I myself shall like to this decay,And eke my name be wiped out likewise.Not so (quoth I); let baser things deviseTo die in dust, but you shall live by fame;My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,And in the heavens write your glorious name,—Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,Our love shall live, and later life renew.
(Spenser:Amoretti, lxxv. 1595.)
The sonnets in Spenser's collected poems number 177, of which fifty-six are in the common English (Surrey) form, the remainder—like the present specimen—rimingababbcbccdcdee. This order of rimes reminds us of that in the Spenserian stanza, and must have been devised by Spenser at about the same time. It has never been adopted by other poets.
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,I all alone beweep my outcast state,And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,And look upon myself and curse my fate;Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,Featured like him, like him with friends possest,Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,With what I most enjoy contented least;Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,Haply I think on thee—and then my state,Like to the lark at break of day arisingFrom sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth bringsThat then I scorn to change my state with kings.
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,I all alone beweep my outcast state,And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,And look upon myself and curse my fate;Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,Featured like him, like him with friends possest,Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,With what I most enjoy contented least;Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,Haply I think on thee—and then my state,Like to the lark at break of day arisingFrom sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth bringsThat then I scorn to change my state with kings.
(Shakspere:Sonnetxxix. 1609.)
That time of year thou may'st in me beholdWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold,Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang:In me thou see'st the twilight of such dayAs after sunset fadeth in the west,Which by and by black night doth take away,Death's second self, that seals up all in rest:In me thou see'st the glowing of such fireThat on the ashes of his youth doth lie,As the death-bed whereon it must expire,Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by:—This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
That time of year thou may'st in me beholdWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold,Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang:In me thou see'st the twilight of such dayAs after sunset fadeth in the west,Which by and by black night doth take away,Death's second self, that seals up all in rest:In me thou see'st the glowing of such fireThat on the ashes of his youth doth lie,As the death-bed whereon it must expire,Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by:—This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
(Shakspere:Sonnetlxxiii. 1609.)
These two specimens, perhaps the favorites of as many readers as any which could be chosen, must serve to represent the sonnets of Shakspere. The whole number of these is 154, and all are in the English form. Slight irregularities in the rime-scheme will be found in about fifteen. Number 99 has fifteen linesand 126 (sometimes called the Epilogue to the first part of the series) has only twelve. Number 20 is wholly based on feminine rimes.[38]