Sonneteer

“ The immortal poet pours his mortal sorrows into our breasts, and a tear falls from his sightless orbs on the friendly hand he presses. The Sonnets are a kind of pensive record of past achievements, loves, and friendships, and a noble exhortation to himself to bear up with cheerful hope and confidence to the last. Some of them are of a more quaint and humorous character; but I speak of those only which are intended to be serious and pathetical.—I do not know indeed but they may be said to be almost the first effusions of this sort of natural and personal sentiment in the language. ”

“ SONNET XIV. Ingratitude, how deadly is thy smart
Proceeding from the Form we fondly love!
How light, compared, all other sorrows prove!
Thou shed'st a Night of Woe, from whence depart
The gentle beams of Patience, that the heart
'Mid lesser ills, illume.—Thy Victims rove
Unquiet as the Ghost that haunts the Grove
Where Murder spilt the life-blood.—O! thy dart
Kills more than Life,—e'en all that makes Life dear ”

“ I do not think a sonnet was ever declaimed in like manner since the creation of the world. Galloping after the great man, and almost bursting my lungs in the effort to make myself heard, with all the trills, gasps, cadences, semitones, clippings of words, and dissonances, which the movement of a horse at full speed could occasion, I recited the sonnet in a storm of sobs and sighs, and blessed my stars when I had pumped out the fourteenth line. ”

“ Staying the furious main, delight has cast
O'er my rapt spirit, and my thrilling heart,
Dear as the softer joys green vales impart.
[Pg 98]
SONNET XCVI. The breathing freshness of the shining Morn,
Whose beams glance yellow on the distant fields,
A sweet, unutterable pleasure yields
To my dejected sense, that turns with scorn
From the light joys of Dissipation born. ”

“ Who ever read the volume of the Sonnets without finding that the poet had there revealed, under masks that are no masks to the intelligent, the lore of friendship and of love; the confusion of sentiments in the most susceptible, and, at the same time, the most intellectual of men? What trait of his private mind has he hidden in his dramas? ”

“ Bringing each day, at morn, at noon, at eve,
His mild illuminations.—Nymph, no more
Is thine to mourn beneath the scanty shade
Of half-blown foliage, shivering to deplore
Thy garlands immature, thy rites unpaid;
Meads dropt with [1] gold again to thee belong,
Soft gales, luxuriant bowers, and wood-land song.
1: Kingcups. [Pg 46]
SONNET XLIV. Rapt Contemplation, bring thy waking dreams
To this umbrageous vale at noon-tide hour,
While full of thee seems every bending flower,
Whose petals tremble o'er the shadow'd streams! ”

“ Tell of His love who sends the dew,
The rain and sunshine too,
To nourish one small seed.
THE WORLD Sonnet
By day she woos me, soft, exceeding fair:
But all night as the moon so changeth she;
Loathsome and foul with hideous leprosy
And subtle serpents gliding in her hair.
By day she woos me to the outer air,
Ripe fruits, sweet flowers, and full satiety:
But through the night, a beast she grins at me,
A very monster void of love and prayer.
By day she stands a lie: by night she stands
In all the naked horror of the truth
With pushing horns and clawed and clutching hands. ”

“ Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry, And I will sing a lullaby. Rock them, rock them, lullaby. Care is heavy, therefore sleep you, You are care, and care must keep you. Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry, And I will sing a lullaby. Rock them, rock them, lullaby. Thomas Dekker [1570?-1641?]
"SLEEP, BABY, SLEEP" Sleep, baby, sleep! what ails my dear, What ails my darling thus to cry? Be still, my child, and lend thine ear, To hear me sing thy lullaby. My pretty lamb, forbear to weep; Be still, my dear; sweet baby, sleep. Thou blessed soul, what canst thou fear? What thing to thee can mischief do? ”

“ The thought of the sonnet is, that, while he smiles at himself for weeping over dreams and fables of his own invention, he may remember that every thing that he fears and hopes is equally fictitious,—that all is false, his existence a delirium, and his whole life a dream;—and it ends with a prayer that he may awaken and find repose in the bosom of truth. ”

“ So unconstrainedly do the poetic language and imagery arrange their metrical feet in the beautiful order of the Sonnet,—while the one luminous idea, like electricity, runs through the whole,—that the mind which can perceive, sees only the radiant thought, yet feels that a harmonious chain is its conductor. ”

“ Well then, replied he, we will say that this sonnet would confuse clearer heads than thine; it is all the better for that. Sonnets, odes, in short, all compositions which partake of the sublime, are of course the reverse of the simple and natural; they are enveloped in clouds, and their darkness constitutes their grandeur. Let the poet only fancy that he understands himself, no matter whether his readers understand him or not. ”

“ There had been a sound foreign to the serene silence of the peaceful, sleeping household; a sound too low to rouse a slumberer from repose by its mere volume, too low almost to be heard; a sound so low as to obtrude itself only upon the most super-sensitive sub-consciousness—Varge lay awake. ”

“ Even the Sonnet upon Sonnets, so perfect in the details, is not perfect as a whole.
However, I am not so fastidious as some persons about the dress of a thought. These sonnets are so replete with sweetness and spirit, that we can excuse their want of symmetry; and probably should not feel it, except from comparison with more highly-finished works of the same kind. One more let me extract, which should be laid to heart:
“Desponding father! ”

“ That laid the Friends in dust, whose natal morn
Rose near their own;—and solemn is the call;—
Yet, like those weak, deserted leaves forlorn,
Shivering they cling to life, and fear to fall!
[Pg 95]
SONNET XCIII. Yon soft Star, peering o'er the sable cloud,
Sheds its [1] green lustre thro' the darksome air.—
Haply in that mild Planet's crystal sphere
Live the freed Spirits, o'er whose timeless shroud
Swell'd my lone sighs, my tearful sorrows flow'd. ”

“ Might it not be that this host of angels is descending upon the sleeping world to soothe the restless, worried ones, and smooth the puckered, aching brows in quiet slumber? Lulled by their gentle music, or the rustle of their approaching footsteps, the weary one would soon find refreshing sleep. ”

“ 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 short solace there, as I have found. ”

“ By night when others soundly slept
And hath at once both ease and Rest,
My waking eyes were open kept
And so to lie I found it best.
I sought him whom my Soul did Love,
With tears I sought him earnestly. ”

“ I would next call attention to portions of these Sonnets which I do not present as of themselves having any clearly determinate weight as to the age of the poet, but which do have great significance from their correspondence in tone and effect with what has been already quoted. The poet repeatedly falls into meditations or fancies which seem more natural to a person on the descending than on the ascending side of life. ”

“ These are no sonnets for an idle hour. It is only when the emotions illumine the perceptive powers that we see the reality. It is in the light born of this double current that we look upon the face of the mystery unveiled. I have lived with these sonnets and ballate daily, month in and month out, and have been drawn daily deeper into them and daily into contemplation of things that are not of an hour. And I deem, for this, that voi altri pochi, who understand, will love me better for my labour in proportion as you read more carefully. ”

“ When it is calm, as it was that morning, the silence, uninterrupted by any movement or sound, is peculiarly striking. That morning in the steppe it was quiet and dull, though the sun had already risen. ”

“ Some of the little folk who have need to be coaxed and urged to bed six nights out of the seven, would hardly dare to fret, I imagine, if they only knew that to be a sound sleeper is an accomplishment sorely envied by some of those grown-up people who may sit up as late as they choose. And if one of those wakeful, grown-up people should some day ask you, “What is the secret of your sound sleeping, my little friend?” just tell them that you think it is because you do not worry. ”

“ For some moments the silence threatens to remain unbroken between us; for some moments the subdued sound of father’s and mother’s talk from among the rosebeds and the piercing clamour of the canaries—fish-wives among birds—are the only noises that salute our ears. Noise we make none ourselves. ”

“ Let your smiling lips say on oath how my voice lost itself in silence like a drunken bee in the lotus.
It is evening, and the time for the flowers to close their petals.
Give me leave to sit by your side, and bid my lips to do the work that can be done in silence and in the dim light of stars. ”

“ To arouse suddenly from a sound sleep in the woods at dawn while this chant is in progress, is like awakening in another sphere, where sings the choir celestial. We slip from sleep into the heaven of song, and it requires another awakening to bring us to consciousness of this actual world about us. ”

“ And flush Parnassus with a newer light;
To put these little sonnet-men to flight
Who fashion, in a shrewd, mechanic way,
Songs without souls, that flicker for a day,
To vanish in irrevocable night. ”

“ You are called up at four in the morning, when the sleep of a growing youth is soundest. The maniacal wretch of the other watch, who does the calling, does it with the glee and screech of a fiend. He will not stop his “All Ha-a-a-nds!” until he hears some responsive echo from the sleepers. He is noisy and joyous because it is so near the time he can turn in. ”

“ Only yesterday the incessant noise in our ears, by describing to us in a continuous narrative all that was happening in the street and in the house, succeeded at length in making us sleep, like a boring book; to-night, through the sheet of silence that is spread over our sleep a shock, louder than the rest, manages to make itself heard, gentle as a sigh, unrelated to any other sound, mysterious ”

“ This sonnet expresses the poet's creed, to which his practice was confirmed. This fact imparts unusual simplicity to his verse—a simplicity that strikes us all the more at the present time, when an over-refinement of thought and expression is in vogue.]
[Footnote 13: This sonnet, on the commonest of all poetic themes, treats of love in a deep, serious way. It is removed as far as possible from the sentimental.] ”

“ The mastering music walks the sunlit sea.”
Perhaps I have said enough to illustrate my indication as to the opening metaphor in your sonnet. Apart from the incongruity of the image, it has no logical congruity with the collateral idea of Fear. The sonnet itself turns on a fine emotion in your mind: let that emotion shape a worthy raiment of metaphor and haunting cadence of music, not as the metricist desires but as the poet au fond compels. ”

“ And the loneliness and silence of the night will take a shape almost tangible. The stirring of the half-dead leaves, the chirping of a belated cricket, simply emphasized the loneliness and made the silence more profound. At intervals, all nature seemed to heave a deep sigh, and address itself to slumber again. ”

“ To devotees of the sonnet, who find in that poetic form the moat perfect vehicle that has ever been devised for the expression of a single importunate emotion, it will not seem strange that at the threshold of a literary period whose characteristic note is the most intense personality, the instinct of poets should have directed them to the form most perfectly fitted for the expression of this inner motive. ”

“ I would illustrate my meaning. Sonnet [Pg 14] CXXVI. is sometimes said to be an invocation to Cupid. [3] That seems to me to destroy all its grace and beauty. The first two lines of the Sonnet,
O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle, hour—
are quite appropriate, if addressed to the god of love. ”

“ In the meantime night advances, the noise ceases by degrees—a profound silence succeeds, and there only remains of this evening the confused idea of a dream, in which the people had forgotten for a moment their labour, the learned their studies, and the nobility their idleness. ”

“ The legitimate does not suit the language over well from the pouncing rhymes—the other kind appears too elegiac—and the couplet at the end of it has seldom a pleasing effect—I do not pretend to have succeeded—it will explain itself.' The sonnet was printed in Life, Letters and Literary Remains. ”

“ Sonnet composed in the name of a father, whose daughter had recently died shortly after her marriage; and addressed to the father of her who had lately taken the veil.
Of two fair virgins, modest, though admired,
Heaven made us happy; and now, wretched sires,
⁠Heaven for a nobler doom their worth desires,
⁠And gazing upon either, both required. ”

“ Eleven groups of six sonnets each classified under, love, absence, passion, doubt, philosophy, content, separation, solitude, reconciliation, jealousy and retrospect.
“A few of these sonnets have merit. The pity is that they are submerged beneath a mass of tedious commonplace.” ”