English Verse Part 40

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 hand Of Love, who cried to lose it, and he gave The notes to Glory."

(_To Lamartine._)

Compare, also, Wordsworth's saying that in Milton's hand

"The Thing became a trumpet, whence he blew Soul-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 Ma.s.son, "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" rimes _cfffgg_.

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 smiled On his lone hours? Ingenuous views engage His thoughts, on themes, uncla.s.sic falsely styled, Intent. While cloistered Piety displays Her mouldering roll, the piercing eye explores New manners, and the pomp of elder days, Whence culls the pensive bard his pictured stores.

Nor rough nor barren are the winding ways Of h.o.a.r 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's _English 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's _Age of Johnson_, pp. 254, 255, and Beers's _English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century_, pp. 160, 161).

O Time! who know'st a lenient hand to lay Softest 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 tear That 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 shower Forgetful, though its wings are wet the while: Yet ah! how much must that poor heart endure Which 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 strains Whose 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, new And 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 book By Seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light, On which the eyes of G.o.d 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 doom Ourselves no prison is; and hence to me, In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound Within 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 key Shakspere unlocked his heart; the melody Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound; A thousand times this pipe did Ta.s.so sound; With it Camoens soothed an exile's grief; The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp, It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand The Thing became a trumpet, whence he blew Soul-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 hours And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers, For this, for every thing, we are out of tune; It moves us not.--Great G.o.d! I'd rather be A 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 as _abbaacca_; 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 separated into _two_ parts, to which, as I before observed, the strict Italian model, as they write it, is favorable."

Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew Thee 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 concealed Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find, Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed, That to such countless...o...b.. 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. In _The 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 stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those pa.s.sions read Which 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 decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.

(Sh.e.l.lEY: _Ozymandias of Egypt_. 1817.)

Sh.e.l.ley 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 run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead: That is the Gra.s.shopper's; he takes the lead In summer luxury; he has never done With 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 frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half lost The Gra.s.shopper's among some gra.s.sy hills.

(KEATS: _The Gra.s.shopper and Cricket_. 1817.)

Keats's sonnets are for the most part regular in both rime-scheme and bipart.i.te structure; but a number of the posthumous sonnets are in the English form. The present specimen (which competes with the more familiar sonnet on _Chapman's Homer_ for the chief place among those of Keats) is a particularly good example of the bipart.i.te 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 race Forever stare! O flat and shocking face, Grimly divided from the breast below!

Thou that on dry land horribly dost go With a split body and most ridiculous pace, p.r.o.ng after p.r.o.ng, 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 dry And dreary sloth! What particle canst thou share Of the only blessed life, the watery?

I sometimes see of ye an actual _pair_ Go by, linked fin by fin! most odiously.

(LEIGH HUNT: _The Fish to the Man_. 1836.)

If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange And be all to me? Shall I never miss Home-talk and blessing, and the common kiss That comes to each in turn, nor count it strange, When I look up, to drop on a new range Of walls and floors,--another home than this?

Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which is Fill'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_, x.x.xv.

1850.)

The forty-four _Sonnets from the Portuguese_ (the t.i.tle, of course, being purely fanciful) const.i.tute 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 cla.s.sed as sonnets." (_Primer of English Verse_, pp. 175, 176.)

A Sonnet is a moment's monument,-- Memorial from the Soul's eternity To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be, Whether for l.u.s.tral 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 see Its flowering crest impearled and orient.

A sonnet is a coin: its face reveals The soul,--its converse, to what Power 'tis due:-- Whether for tribute to the august appeals Of 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.