Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles Part 6

All three books, the '92 and '94 editions and the ma.n.u.script volume, show a like taste for orderly arrangement not found in general in the sonnet-cycles.

Constable was a Cambridge man and was thirty years old when the _Diana_ was first printed. He lived until 1613 and bore an excellent reputation in his day. He was the friend of Ben Jonson, who speaks of his "ambrosaic Muse," of Sidney, Harington, Tofte, and other literary men.

If toying with the sonnet in _Diana_ seems to indicate a light and trifling spirit, we have to yield that with Constable as with Fletcher the graver matters of state policy formed the chief interest in life to the author. In Constable's case the interest was religious and the poet was personally a man of devout feeling. Writing from the Tower, where for a time he was detained, he says, "Whether I remain in prison or go out, I have learned to live alone with G.o.d." At the conclusion of the third part of the Harleian Miscellany transcript, the author says: "When I had ended this last sonnet, and found that such vain poems as I had by idle hours writ, did amount just to the diametrical number 63, methought it was high time for my folly to die, and to employ the remnant of my wit to other calmer thoughts less sweet and less bitter."

It was probably in a mood like this that the poet turned from his devotion to an earthly love and began to write his "Sonnets in honor of G.o.d and his Saints." In this group, as in the other, he expresses that pa.s.sion for beauty characteristic of the renaissance, but here he shows the lack of a clear conception as to where the line should be drawn between earthly and heavenly beauty. In Constable we see the new revelation barely emerging from the darkness, the human hand reaching out in art toward the divine, but not knowing how to take and hold the higher in its grasp. These sonnets are as "conceitful" as the others, but the collection ill.u.s.trates an early effort to turn the poetic energy into a new field, to broaden the scope of subject-matter possible in sonnet-form. The poet was evidently a close student of the sonnet-structure. He used the Italian and the English form in about an equal number of cases but he experiments on a large variety of rime-arrangements besides.

As to the personality honoured under the name of Diana, there seems to be much obscurity. From the sonnet _To his Mistress_, we learn that though he addresses several he loves but one.

"Grace full of grace, though in these verses here My love complains of others than of thee, Yet thee alone I loved, and they by me, Thou yet unknown, only mistaken were."

So he loved her, it seems, while she was "yet unknown," something quite possible in the sonneteer's world: and her personality, though shadowed under various names, is to the poet a distinct conception. To the honour of being this poet's inspirer, there are two claimants; one the Lady Rich, the Stella of Sidney, the other the ill-fated Arabella Stuart. It is noteworthy that the only one of all the sonnets addressed personally to particular ladies that is retained in the edition of 1594, is one to Lady Rich. But this sonnet tells us little except that "wished fortune"

had once made it possible for him to see her in all her beauty of roses and lilies, stars and waves of gold: but this might have happened if he had once seen that beauteous lady pa.s.s along the street in the queen's glittering train. Other sonnets to or about the Lady Rich are equally uncommunicative; and if the ill-starred Penelope Devereux is the one alone that Constable loved, Time has shut the secret tightly in his heart and will not give it up.

The other guess is but little nearer to certainty. During the years that Constable was pursuing his shadowy schemes, Arabella Stuart was an object of admiration and of political jealousy; the house where she lived was constantly spied upon, her very tutors were suspected, the wildest schemes were formed upon her royal connections, and it would not be strange if the heart of our poetical zealot turned toward this star of his cause. We may be sure that he would not have been averse to a clandestine meeting, for in writing to that arch-plotter, the Countess of Shrewsbury, Arabella's doting grandmother, he says: "It is more convenient to write unto your Ladyship, than to come unto you or to make any other visits either by day or night till I have further liberty granted me;" besides this, the Earl of Shrewsbury was distantly related to Constable's family, and this fact of kinship may have opened the way; while his sonnet to the Countess intimates that his heart had been touched by some beauty in her Venus' camp. If not Arabella, who could this be?

"To you then, you, the fairest of the wise, And wisest of the fair I do appeal.

A warrior of your camp by force of eyes Me prisoner took, and will with rigour deal, Except you pity in your heart will place, At whose white hands I only seek for grace."

As before, the sonnets addressed to Arabella give no definite information. The first is in the usual strain of praise, and closes:

"My drift was this, Some earthly shadow of thy worth to show Whose heavenly self above world's reason is."

The second is as follows:

"Only hope of our age, that virtues dead By your sweet breath should be revived again; Learning discouraged long by rude disdain By your white hands is only cherished.

Thus others' worth by you is honoured.

But who shall honour yours? Poor wits, in vain We seek to pay the debts which you pertain Till from yourself some wealth be borrowed.

Lend some your tongues, that every nation may In his own hear your virtuous praises blaze; Lend them your wit, your judgment, memory, Lest they themselves should not know what to say; And that thou mayst be loved as much as praised, My heart thou mayst lend them which I gave thee."

The last of Constable's sonnets in the edition of 1592 is this dedicatory address:

"My mistress' worth gave wings unto my muse And my muse wings did give unto her name, So, like twin birds, my muse bred with her fame Together now do learn their wings to use.

And in this book, which here you may peruse, Abroad they fly, resolved to try the same Adventure in their flight; and thee, sweet dame, Both she and I for our protection choose; I by my vow, and she by farther right Under your phoenix (wing) presume to fly; That from all carrion beaks in safety might By one same wing be shrouded, she and I.

O happy, if I might but flitter there Where you and she and I should be so near."

The value of this author's praise, however, is somewhat impaired by the extravagances in certain sonnets where, for instance, he honours a lady whose soul, he says, was "endued in her lifetime with infinite perfections as her divine poems do testify," when she on earth did sing poet-wise angels in heaven prayed for her company, and when she died, her "fair and glittering rays increased the light of heaven;" where again he calls on the Countess of Ess.e.x to revenge the death of her first husband, Sir Philip Sidney, upon the Spanish people by murdering them _en ma.s.se_ with her eyes, and where he calls the Countess of Shrewsbury "chieftain of Venus's host," and places her crowned in heaven beside the Virgin Mary. Constable's zealous publisher was not far wrong when he claimed that in this poet "conceit first claimed his birthright to enjoy," and since we do not find either in the sonnets to Lady Rich or in those to Lady Arabella any special tone of sincerity that leads us to have confidence in our conjecture, we shall be compelled to leave this puzzle unsolved.

DIANA

UNTO HER MAJESTY'S SACRED HONOURABLE MAIDS

Eternal Twins! that conquer death and time, Perpetual advocates in heaven and earth!

Fair, chaste, immaculate, and all divine, Glorious alone, before the first man's birth; Your twofold charities, celestial lights, Bow your sun-rising eyes, planets of joy, Upon these orphan poems; in whose rights Conceit first claimed his birthright to enjoy.

If, pitiful, you shun the song of death, Or fear the stain of love's life-dropping blood, O know then, you are pure; and purer faith Shall still keep white the flower, the fruit, and bud.

Love moveth all things. You that love, shall move All things in him, and he in you shall love.

RICHARD SMITH.[A]

[Footnote A: Richard Smith was the publisher of the 1594 edition of the _Diana_.]

TO HIS MISTRESS

Grace full of grace, though in these verses here My love complains of others than of thee, Yet thee alone I loved, and they by me, Thou yet unknown, only mistaken were.

Like him which feels a heat now here now there, Blames now this cause now that, until he see The fire indeed from whence they caused be; Which fire I now do know is you, my dear, Thus diverse loves dispersed in my verse In thee alone for ever I unite, And fully unto thee more to rehea.r.s.e; To him I fly for grace that rules above, That by my grace I may live in delight, Or by his grace I never more may love.

TO HIS ABSENT DIANA

Severed from sweet content, my live's sole light, Banished by over-weening wit from my desire, This poor acceptance only I require: That though my fault have forced me from thy sight Yet that thou would'st, my sorrows to requite, Review these sonnets, pictures of thy praise; Wherein each woe thy wondrous worth doth raise, Though first thy worth bereft me of delight.

See them forsaken; for I them forsook, Forsaken first of thee, next of my sense; And when thou deign'st on their black tears to look, Shed not one tear, my tears to recompence; But joy in this, though fate 'gainst me repine, My verse still lives to witness thee divine.

THE FIRST DECADE

I

_Only of the birth and beginning of love_

Resolved to love, unworthy to obtain, I do no favour crave; but, humble wise, To thee my sighs in verse I sacrifice, Only some pity and no help to gain.

Hear then, and as my heart shall aye remain A patient object to thy lightning eyes, A patient ear bring thou to thund'ring cries; Fear not the crack, when I the blow sustain.

So as thine eye bred mine ambitious thought, So shall thine ear make proud my voice for joy.

Lo, dear, what wonders great by thee are wrought, When I but little favour do enjoy!

The voice is made the ear for to rejoice, And your ear giveth pleasure to my voice.

II

_An excuse to his mistress for resolving to love so worthy a creature_

Blame not my heart for flying up so high, Sith thou art cause that it this flight begun; For earthly vapours drawn up by the sun, Comets become, and night suns in the sky.

Mine humble heart, so with thy heavenly eye Drawn up aloft, all low desires doth shun; Raise thou me up, as thou my heart hast done, So during night in heaven remain may I.

I say again, blame not my high desire, Sith of us both the cause thereof depends.

In thee doth shine, in me doth burn a fire, Fire draws up other, and itself ascends.

Thine eye a fire, and so draws up my love; My love a fire, and so ascends above.

III

_Of the birth of his love_

Fly low, dear love, thy sun dost thou not see?

Take heed, do not so near his rays aspire; Lest, for thy pride, inflamed with wreakful ire, It burn thy wings, as it hath burned me.

Thou haply sayst thy wings immortal be, And so cannot consumed be with fire; And one is hope, the other is desire, And that the heavens bestowed them both on thee.

A muse's words made thee with hope to fly, An angel's face desire hath begot, Thyself engendered by a G.o.ddess' eye; Yet for all this, immortal thou art not.

Of heavenly eye though thou begotten art, Yet art thou born but of a mortal heart.