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Wednesday 7 November 1866
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SONNETS :
--o--
With Prefatory Remarks on The Sonnet:
By Charles Harpur.
The Sonnet is, perhaps, the best metrical form yet invented for the terse embodiment of any truth which is spherical by reason of its comprehensiveness, or which is great and general enough to be simple, and thence amenable to the brevity of treatment almost aphoristic. Nor is there any better form for the musical setting forth of any strikingly individual idea, or fact, or love-fancy. It is also eminently suitable as a vehicle for literary compliment, or biographical inci- dent, and when spirited with the light of some memorable event, or by the stirring influence of some heroic name, it may indeed, as in the hands of Milton, become " a trumpet," and thence a fit medium for blowing " soul-animating strains " into the ears of all
men.
But apart from its subject there must, in the mere construction and vehicular capacity of the Sonnet, be always exhibited an absolute mastery over means. This, I say, is an indispensable requirement, admitting of no incompleteness either of thought or expression; no slip-slop, no inversion purely for rhyme's sake; not even one superfluous word. Its very metrical mode and set limits admit of no " beating about the bush." Nay, the subject of it must be handled so bravely and openly as to make directness of treatment a result inevitable. And thus a perfect sonnet will be as it were a microcosm-whole in itself, both in form and spirit the spherical mould and integument of a spherical subject-the one exactly enclosing the other, without either diffuseness or over compression, and so shutting it up for ever in a " measureful
content."
Moreover, the untransgressible limits of the sonnet often tend to induce that closeness of expression, and that sublimation of imagery which are proper to the highest kind of enduring poetry, namely, that kind which is suggestive rather than decscriptive, or which by a few select images, intensified in the putting, suggests infinitely more than could be circumstan- tially described, or otherwise than wearisomely; and
which, therefore, while it amply recompenses the imagination of the reader, exercises it as well, and thereby quickens and strengthens it for direct con- ception upon its own account, or as an individual and self-sustained faculty. And, having, as I think, this tendency, of course these exact limits prevent in an equal degree that verbal delusion of the sense which is the besetting weakness of most modern writers, both in a verse and prose. Not but a well- phrased amplification in the manner of setting forth a thought may be sometimes advisable. If novel, or many-sided, or somewhat obscure from its very com- prehensiveness, it may even demand a double draught of expression. But to flood it with words, however well chosen or elegant in themselves, is not to clarify, but simply to drown it. Nay, though in itself as vivid and nimble as a sunbeam, it may be dulled and deadened, like an ill-mixed potation, by a few irrele- vant or superfluous words-or even by one word, if it should happen to be at all repugnant as well as need-
less to the sense.
Ordinary readers object to the Sonnet on account of its shortness and individuality. It is not long enough, nor many-featured enough to produce, or minister to, popular excitement. With the modern novel- pampered many it is only a poetic '"nobbler"-- an apology for a dram. It has not grip enough for their coarse mental cravings-and apropos of this -A country Englishman was partaking of some fruit with members of a family of my acquaint- ance, which consisted of two sorts-some nectarines of exquisite flavour, but singularly small, and a quan- tity of large slipstone peaches of so bad a quality as to be almost tasteless. But after demolishing two or three of the nectarines at a mouthful, the countryman was observed to give them up with a look of some disappointment, and devote himself exclusively to the peaches. He was asked the reason why-for, said his questioner, the nectarines are excellent, but the peaches scarcely eatable. "Ess," replied the clown, " the nectons be main good loike-but then there be no grip on 'em." Quantity rather than quality was evidently the ticket for him. And the literary taste of those readers who cannot relish the Sonnet merely because it is short and one-thoughted, is every whit as rustical, not to say vulgar, as was this fellow's gastric appetite, all their pretensions to refinement notwith-
standing.
In most of the ensuing sonnets the arrangement of the rhymes is somewhat different from the run of them in that form which has been adopted from the Italian poets by many of the best writers of the Sonnet in English. But in devising this different arrangement of the rhymes, I have been actuated by no mere desire to innovate upon a usage so imposingly established. In the pure Italian form the reduplication of the rhymes is upon the whole, as it appears to me, not only too distant, but too couplet- like in their recurrence, to tell thoroughly well; and to follow out this form, in one of its varieties, so far as to rhyme the ninth and fourteenth lines (as is often done by Wordsworth) is tantamount in English to not rhyming them at all. It is perceived to be a rhyme only by the eye-and by the eye itself only upon trying back. On the other hand, the old English or Shaksperian mode of constructing the Sonnet is obviously defective in oneness, both as to artistic appearance and musical effect, it being indeed, but a series of three separate quatrains based upon a closing couplet. Hence the rhyme-arrangement in this form is manifestly an unsuitable one. It is not sufficiently carried through, inter-currently, to impress either the ear or the eye with a feeling of wholenes and homogeneity, however single-thoughted and individual in itself (when critically after-con- sidered) may be the subject of the poem. Now the form in which the first three, and several other of the ensuing sonnets, are written, partakes some- what of both the forms above referred to, and after having carefully tried it by my own ear, I do verily believe that it is a better compacted one than either, and altogether fitter for the English Sonnet, or rather
the Sonnet in English.
I
Rising and setting suns of Liberty;
Mountainous ventures, and the wrecks thick strewn By stormy Passion o'er life's treacherous sea,
Relieved with shores of green delight, and boon And starry aims, and the serene pale moon Of vestal pathos; -- these must ever be The sensuous world-dome of poetry,
Self-built and fashioned to some Orphic tune. And for its spirit: --All that Thought can seize
Of worth and character, worked on by the might Of public needs and household sympathies,
And that religion of the heart, whose flight
Is strongest, and most heavenward, 'mid the blight Of mortal woe; -- its human spirit are these.
II. His mind alone is great, who (though but one)
Doth venerate of present things or past The absolute only -- as the liege of none
Save God and Truth. Who awed not by this vast And shadowy scheme of life, but anchored fast In Love, and sitting central, like the sun,
S0 gives his mental beams to pierce and run
Through all its secrets while his days may last, And thus progressive, little faith hath he
For mysteries-till, soundmg them, he hear The gathered tones of their stirred depths agree
With that religious harmony severe,
Which ever anthems to his spirit's ear, The hallowing presence of the Deity.
III
To Kossuth (in 1850. ) Thou Man of moral majesty and might!
Now that thy Country, bound and bleeding, cries In vain for help and regnant Austria's spite
Can wound thy truth with diplomatic lies, Not to despair alone bespeaks thee wise-- Bespeaks thee true, thou pleader for the right! For Liberty, an essence born of light,
May swoon-may slumber;-but she never dies! Thy sacred aims the Magyar heart shall swell
Till through his war-trump in full triumph given? Thy vast-ascending eloquence so well,
In mighty appeal, projects them up to Heaven; Storming God's peace-as the still sky is riven By some great mountain in the Land of Tell!
The ever-influencing Bard is one
Whose spirit is warm and genial as the soul
Of Summer, when, through nature's quickened whol. It teems in fruitage, mellowing in the sun;- Whose heart doth ever in the fulness run
Out tow'rds all beauty and all nobleness,
And thence wherever there's a rich excess In what is suffered, and in what is done. His too is faith-heroic insight;-yea,
So broadly doth the Godwardness of man, As an instinctive revelation, ray
For him the Future's providential plan,
That even beyond his conscious thought, is he Thy trumpet, Truth! thy prophet, Liberty!
V
There's a rare spirit or feeling that may be
Ingathered only by the chastened dreams Of constant hearts. Where'er the ministry
Of beautiful nature hath enhanced the themes Of some Petrarchian mind, whose story gleams Within the past like a moon silvered sea;
Or where the fortunes of true love, once free
Grey interest hath encaged in iron schemes, Or stirred the winds of Ruin till they drove
In tempest over them;-there ever after, The very airs that whisper to the grove,
The echo's mystery, and the streamlet's laughter, Savour of passion and with subtlest wafture Infuse suggestions to romantic love.
Dressed all in snowy white! I saw her so,
And thought her garb the emblem of her mind. "Pure--spotless--innocently unconfined-- What chastity of style (I said) can be
Yet flowing as the breeze when it is free,
And with sweet fancies of the angelic kind, A Virgin so arrayed, and so inclined In spirit, doth most witchingly agree!
Oh that I were that graceful garb, enfolding
All I most covet in this world so wide,
How vainly have I in my cunning tried To stop at admiration ! since beholding
Her form thus garmented, my will at length
Is drowned in the wild waves of Love's arousing strength!"
VII.
I sleep my brain was with a sweet pang wrung,
And straight I seemed to shoot in spirit away Into some world whereon a lovelier day
Than ours glowed purpling amid arbours, hung
With star-bright fruit, and where bird-spirits sung, Unceasingly, a bliss-inspiring lay,
While streams of living splendour in their play Chimed to it, as with many a mellow tongue.
I seemed alone;-when from a bowery place
A silver-winged shape came moving fast, And as I looked on its approaching face,
Methought some thrilling memory of it passed Over my soul: -and then, that winged grace
Was Nora! smiling as I saw her last.
VIII.
It was a tale of passion that we read--
Of two who loved, not happily, but well ; And evermore her gentle breast did swell Like a twin billow, - for her feelings fed
Upon its musical sorrow-and, brimming, shed
Such dews of pity us can only fall
From natures full of sweetnese, when the pall Of Tragedy o'ershadows them with dread.
Then, as I looked, in her raised eye there stood
A grin more excellent than ever shined
In that famed mine beyond the Indian flood :
And which, at once, in its soul-being, I shrined Within my spirit's transcendental sphere--
And so embalmed its love with an immortal tear.
IX.
Night was new throned in heaven, and we did rove--
Nora and I-in the cool shadowless haze, At the wild lustre of the stars to gaze.
Ere yet the moon's red rim had showed above
The pine trees. For in both our souls did move
The same poetic fancy -That their rays
Were richer for all those who from the ways Of Man's long past had looked at them in love.
And when our glances through their midst had run
From orb to orb of all that seemed most fair, To fix atlast, with mutual heed, on one
That gloried in the West beyond compare,
We farther deemed, than when the day was done
The spirit of our joy glowed mansioned there.
X.
His lot how glorious whom the Muse shall name
Her first High Priest in this Arcadian clime, And thereby clothie, as with a robe of flame!
With the creations of her Grecian prime
Much conversant, and to like heights sublime Lifting new matter, let him build to Fame! Quarrying from Nature's everlasting frame
The Parian beauty of his lofty rhyme.
Then, meetly mated, o'er his splendid page
Shall glow his countrywomen's lustrous eyes, And many a future hero's noble rage
Find there fit nutriment;-all brave and wise And beautiful spirits 'neath his native skies, Breathing his influence from age to age Euroma, September, 1866.