CHAPTER VII

THE SONNET

A Sonnet is a moment's monument,-
Memorial from the Soul's eternity

To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,
Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
Of its own arduous fullness 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.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

ALTHOUGH primitive poetry was largely spontaneous and more or less irregular, skill provoked emulation, poets soon followed models, and many fixed stanzaic forms eventually became established. In like manner at a later period whole poems came to be modeled on certain structural patterns, the chief features of which were uniformity in meter, in rime, in the number of lines, and, sometimes, in the use of a refrain. Great poems have as a rule been of simple structure, but the greatest poets have often, for some of their compositions, delighted in

the fixed forms. Because of their difficulty, these forms challenge the careful workman. They encourage the search for the right word and compel condensation. While the thought may be as varied as human experience, the form offers the reader the pleasure of recognition.

The most famous of all the fixed forms is the sonnet, great examples of which are found in Italian, French, German, and other modern languages as well as English. The sonnet was a product of the early Italian Renaissance, a period when the crafts of the goldsmith, the painter, and the poet were plied with equal care and skill. It was introduced into England early in the sixteenth century by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and at once attained a remarkable vogue. Shakespeare, Spenser, and Sidney, as well as a number of minor Elizabethan poets, wrote sonnet sequences. Between the death of Milton and the dawn of the Romantic period the form was neglected, but from the appearance of William Lisle Bowles's Sonnets in 1789 it has, to the present day, embodied some of the finest thoughts of great poets both English and American.

In poetry written in English there are, in order of importance, three main types of the sonnet: the Italian, the Shakespearean, and the Spenserian. The Italian, or Petrarchan, receives its name from the fact that it was used by Petrarch and other Italian poets. Each of the other two types takes its name from the most illustrious English poet who early made an extended use of it.

The first great English poet to use the Italian sonnet form was the scholarly John Milton. Afflicted, it is believed, by cataracts which a modern surgeon could have

removed in an hour, the poet of Comus served the Commonwealth in spite of failing eyesight, and lived to become the author of Paradise Lost. Milton's reaction from the gloom of blindness is given in a sonnet which concludes with one of the most frequently quoted-and misquoted— lines in the language. The following is a perfect Italian sonnet of the purest type. It consists of fourteen iambic pentameter lines. The first eight lines form the octave, which rimes abbaabba; the remaining six lines, riming cdecde, constitute the sestet.

WHEN I CONSIDER

When I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest He returning chide,"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?" I fondly ask:-But Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need
Either man's work, or His own gifts: who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best: His state

Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:-
They also serve who only stand and wait."

John Milton (1608-1674)

John Keats-who, among English poets, was peculiarly the high priest of beauty—was especially stirred by the art and mythology of ancient Greece. In a sonnet he expressed his feelings upon first reading the Iliad and the

Odyssey in the translations by the Elizabethan poet, George Chapman. Keats, of course, had Balboa, not Cortez, in mind. Darien is the Isthmus of Panama. All that was said of the form of Milton's "When I Consider" is true of this sonnet except that the sestet rimes cdcdcd, a succession nearly as common as cdecde. Whether a sonnet is printed in two divisions, or four, or three, or one, the structural principles are the same.

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific-and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise-
Silent upon a peak in Darien.

John Keats (1795-1821)

The two parts of the Italian sonnet have more than a stanzaic significance. The thought is always cast in a certain form. The octave presents a thought, question, or problem, which the sestet completes appropriately. Verify this statement with regard to the sonnets already quoted, observing that the point of division is not always

coincidental with the passing from octave to sestet. The thought of the octave frequently, in fact, runs over into the first half of the next line. In poorly constructed sonnets (which may, however, be excellent poems) the distinction between sestet and octave is not strictly maintained. In all regular sonnets of the Italian type the rime scheme of the octave is abbaabba; in the sestet, however, great latitude in rime is allowed.

Although the Italian is regarded as the standard sonnet, the other types, particularly the Shakespearean, are vehicles for some superb poems. The Shakespearean sonnet does not afford the symphonic effect of the Italian, but its heroic quatrains produce a sweeping movement, and the concluding heroic couplet often gives to the thought an effective epigrammatic turn. The rime scheme of the three quatrains and the couplet is abab cdcd efef gg. Shakespeare's one hundred and fifty-four sonnets constitute a sequence unparalleled for sustained power and beauty. Like Horace, Ronsard, and other poets, the author spoke with prophetic confidence of his future fame. Strangely enough, however, the "fair friend" whom he addresses in Sonnet CIV has fallen heir to an anonymous immortality. The phrase "eye I ey'd” in this sonnet reflects the Elizabethan fondness for conceits. "Fair thou ow'st" means beauty you possess. A number quoted as a title refers to the sonnet's place in its cycle.

XVIII

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate: