English Verse Part 41

(ROSSETTI: Sonnet preceding _The House of Life_. 1881.)

When do I see thee most, beloved one?

When in the light the spirits of mine eyes Before thy face, their altar, solemnize The worship of that Love through thee made known?

Or when in the dusk hours (we two alone), Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies, And my soul only sees thy soul its own?

O love, my love! if I no more should see Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee, Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,-- How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope The 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, and _The House of Life_ (in 101 sonnets) is probably to be regarded as the most important sonnet-sequence since the Elizabethan age. The bipart.i.te character of Rossetti's sonnets is marked, in editions of his poems, by the printing of the octave and sestet with a s.p.a.ce 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 night Against the Turk; whose inroad nowhere scales Their headlong pa.s.ses, but his footstep fails, And red with blood the Crescent reels from fight Before their dauntless hundreds, in p.r.o.ne flight By thousands down the crags and through the vales.

O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years, Great Tsernagora! never since thine own Black ridges drew the cloud and brake the storm Has 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 bipart.i.te 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 the _East 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 overhead Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green, And the pale weaver, through his window seen In 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 been Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the Living Bread!'

O human soul! so long as thou canst so Set up a mark of everlasting light Above 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 free Body and soul the purpose to pursue, G.o.d traced for both? If fetters, not a few, Of prejudice, convention, fall from me, These shall I bid men--each in his degree Also G.o.d-guided--bear, and gayly too?

But little do or can the best of us: That little is achieved through Liberty.

Who, then, dares hold, emanc.i.p.ated thus-- His fellow shall continue bound? Not I.

Who live, love, labor freely, nor discuss A 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 in _Anglia_, 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 to _Jochanan Hakkadosh_, 1883).

One saith: the whole world is a Comedy Played for the mirth of G.o.d upon his throne, Whereof the hidden meanings will be known When Michael's trumpet thrills through earth and sea.

Fate is the dramaturge; Necessity Allots the parts; the scenes, by Nature shown, Embrace each element and every zone, Ordered with infinite variety.Another saith: no calm-eyed Sophocles Indites 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: from _Sonnets on the Thought of Death_. ab.

1880.)

Yon silvery billows breaking on the beach Fall back in foam beneath the star-shine clear, The while my rhymes are murmuring in your ear A restless lore like that the billows teach; For on these sonnet-waves my soul would reach From 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 impa.s.sioned soul A billow of tidal music one and whole Flows in the octave; then, returning free, Its ebbing surges in the sestet roll Back to the deeps of Life's tumultuous sea.

(THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON: _The Sonnet's Voice; a Metrical Lesson by the Sea-sh.o.r.e_. _Athenaeum_, 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 cla.s.s; but the present specimen is an interesting attempt to represent the characteristic metrical expressiveness of the form.

Oft have I seen at some cathedral door A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat, Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor Kneel to repeat his Paternoster o'er; Far off the noises of the world retreat; The loud vociferations of the street Become 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 disconsolate To 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 d.a.m.ned," and would recall my word.

It merged thee with the unill.u.s.trious herd Who crowd the approaches to the infernal gate-- Spirits gregarious, equal in their state As is the innumerable ocean bird, Gannet or gull, whose wandering plaint is heard On Ailsa or Iona desolate.

For, in a world where cruel deeds abound, The merely d.a.m.ned are legion: with such souls Is not each hollow and cranny of Tophet crammed?

Thou with the brightest of h.e.l.l's aureoles Dost shine supreme, incomparably crowned, Immortally, beyond all mortals, d.a.m.ned.

(WILLIAM WATSON: _To the Sultan_, in _The 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.)

B.--THE ENGLISH (SHAKSPERIAN) SONNET

From Tuskane came my Ladies worthy race: Faire Florence was sometyme her auncient seate: The Western yle, whose pleasaunt sh.o.r.e dothe face Wilde 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's _Songs 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 at the 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 press Of 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_, x.x.xix. 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 mourn The 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 pa.s.sions 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 his _Sonnets to Delia_ are 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 brows That we one jot of former love retain.

Now at the last gasp of love's latest breath, When, his pulse failing, pa.s.sion 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.)