ames mmBmmmmmmmm mammmmmmi' FEB 8 le LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Chap. Copyright No UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. SONNETS James Vila Blake Private Edition CHICAGO J898 .v- 24575 ■Copyright, 1898, by James Vila Blake. TWO COPIES REC-IVEO. '( FEB « 4 1899 ]) J Ci % %'\^ THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO A RADIANCE of Faith, Hope and Love, of sunny quaint Cheerfulness, brave Constancy and womanly Wisdom, clothed with the Name of Clara Hamilton Mahony T dedicate to tbee this little book: tbou knowest 'tis the coining of my heart— to me most costly gold. Reading '$ tby part; But less witb eyes tban witb tby love to look, liere there be things that run like any brook, Babbling with ioy t and here it is the art Of artless song to count the tears that start Trom memory's eyes, revisiting a nook Of vanished love. friend, the precious things Chat were, and now are not; yet dearer more that were not once, but now shall be for aye. therefore my verse not false but faithful sings : If sad sometimes, yet like to glistening ore. Deep in its black reflecting golden day. A LETTER. A LETTER. Beloved Friends: Much was I perplexed for a while bow I might say aU I wished to you and yet escape the critic's performing and the noise of his populace who answer his '' Plaudite.'* For I was determined to write to you with all my freedom, if I could, and was willing to suffer somewhat for it if I pleased you still more; yet I shrank, if I must confess so much, from bringing into our company such as know neither you nor me, hut are ready to ''smile a little smile" {'tis so one of them expressed herself to me — see Sonnet Ixxxvii) at some forgetful touch of nature or fluency of taste. Therefore I was at a stand, as I have said, bow I could unfold me to you as my heart would, yet avoid the arching eyebrows of the cold, the too knowing, the gathered-iLp, the measured-off, every manner of ''unco' guid " — in short, all kinds of the unacquainted. Sud- denly it occurred to me that I could make an edition of my book specially for you, not to be sold, and in this I could say what I would in this letter and in notes not to be put in the edition for the shops ; and then I enlarged my hopes to the making of a better and large-paper edition for you, which I have done, limiting it to two hundred and twenty-five numbered and autograph copies, a love- offering to you ; in which alone I print this letter and 2 the " Notes for my Friends." Herein surely I am secure; for in private talk with my friends I may say what I please, and " 'tis nobody's business " but yours and mine. As to the critics, one may avoid them in the same way as one may hold a boar in small esteem, yet must consider to escape his tusks ; for however little respe^able the ani- mal, his teeth may score tender flesh all the same. " The bullying omniscience'' of the gentry called critics is such an amazing thing as passes beyond t/je bounds wherein surprise is a pleasure — unless indeed we suspeSi that how- ever solemn a face they keep to the puhlic, they make merry over their craft among themselves. Here shoots in mem- ory a pleasant story of them to "point the moral.'' I have heard that t/je Editor of " The Literary Heavens'' unbending and descending from his stool for a vacation, appointed a worthy man to his seat while he went fishing. The substitute having soon a book to review, and finding a place therein about which he was in some doubt, and being new to the craft and not yet rich in its manners, ingenuously confessed his uncertainty, saying that the matter appeared to him so and so, but yet he had some hesitation and would not be understood to speak too assuredly. T/jis article, of uncommon and unwelcome fiavor, coming to the clnef in lois skiff, he lost all taste for fishing for tJjat day, and on his return expressed his wrath to his substitute thus: " Sir, if ever again I leave you in charge of this paper, you will please remember that, how- ever ignorant you may be as an individual, as Editor of ' The Literary Heavens ' you know everything." For my book itself, these omniscient folk, that foot Olympus jauntily, may have their will of it with small concern to me. It is not such writing as they are used to, and I should not expect the barnyard of the present time to have fowl in it that like aught but their accustomed mash. Flint corn is out of date. ' Tis too much for the crops of our critic-fowl of present henneries. zAnd even if they were pleased with me, why should I reck of that} It were foolish, inconsistent, insincere, to value praise where I am indifferent to blame. It is not unseldom a sadness to be- come the fashion. If humbly and earnestly any one hath aimed purely at a pure simplicity, belike he may be driven sometimes to repeat an old poefs words, '' It is as great a §pite to be praised in the wrong place and by a wrong person as can be done to a noble nature." Wherefore for the book itself 1 take no thought; but I would not have these busy-bodies, these Parnassian fringes, feast around my confidences; and if one of these §pecial volumes, not for sale nor in any manner offered to them, shall fall under a critic's observation, he will be overweening if he complain of what never was intended for his acquaintance and has no pretension to invite or entertain him. Let the critic- steeds (if you will permit me another figure) paw the ring and prance and arch their necks around my book itself — as they will, if possibly they become aware of me at all, seeing a way by being aware of me to make others aware of them and know what smart things they can neigh and what snorts let fly 4 from fiery nostrils. But if they busy themselves with the notes ^ or with this letter, which are fot you alone, beloved friends, they will be no better than cart-hacks that have broken a fence to forage in a garden, though the fence by its presence hath said plainly, "Cart-hacks, keep out^ These things I say not because I demise the science of Criticism. To contemn a fine and excellent branch of learning because of pretenders who tramp noisily in the borders of it, were as foolish and pinched-up with vanity replacing thought, as these gossips are. Ihere be critics {a few, — even belike more rare than poets, for what reason I know not) who are noble expounders of still nobler works. But these are men of thought. The critics whose loud bu{{ and small poison I would escape, are like ''inset^ miseries" which have no real dire^ion, but alight anywhere as it may happen. I will offer an exam- ple, the first at hand. In a critical article on the biog- raphy of Tennyson by bis son, I find it said: ''He [Tennyson'] was in the habit of reading his poems aloud, beautifully and impressively, and also of 'explaining' them. Now, we are of those who hold that to 'explain' a poem to one who does not instin&vely understand it, is like explaining a rose to a person devoid of sight or smell— a useless and perfunctory effort." O monstrum horrendum ! Res illotis manibus oblata. / rather would meet a senseless brute, though fierce, than this human folly, to offer me somewhat with no prepara- tion, no real thinking thereon, — a jaunty toss to my table of a raw bit which serves no better for mental diet than in any other cookery, the author holding himself above the office of cook meanwhile, but serving me all the same his uncomposed mess. IVith what a superior smile doth he launch himself! With what a fine pity for the less exalted! But who is this fellow, I would say, that is so pleased with himself against a masters enjoyment in dis- coursing of the meanings which he hath compared in the compressions of verse or clothed in '' the purple and fine linen ' ' of poetic forms ? Thus he proceeds : ''Imagine Robert Browning sitting down to explain himself. eApart from the inherent impossibilities of the task, his sense of the humorous would interdict it." Methinks Browning would have done naught very humorous if he had vouchsafed a note here and there at some length. 'But our critic's tipped chin, that is humor- ous in the double sense thereof. Hath his Sir- Oracle Criticship ever pondered over "The j^ncient Mariner," or " Childe Roland," or Sonnets of j^ngelo? Hath he met the questions that hang about Macbeth or Hamlet or Faust? Hath he known Grove's book on "The Nine Symphonies of Beethoven," or the multiple hosts of like expounders of great works of art ? Or doth he conceive a bare philosophy is to be reasoned and explained, but a noble art- work hath no like thought- deep? Is he ignorant that IDante disdained not to explain bis own Sonnets ? Or that Tasso is said to have "admired Casa so much as to devote a whole lecture to a single one of bis Sonnets, — no unusual honor paid by poets in those days to Son- nets, but seldom by such a poet as the author of the 'Jerusalem Delivered '?" 6 Who is this critic, I would say, that he should prate so glibly and smile so highly in this matter, or touch with such lily-fingers what these masters have handled with so strong a grip ? He reminds me of a silly lady, much given to Hegel clubs and the like, who on observing a fme posie of flowers on my mantel shelf, stood halfway of the room and said, with a superior ecstacy, ''Ah! when I behold such exquisite blossoms, I feel it is a desecration to smell of them!" But the case would not be so bad for our voluble critic if he had taken thought enough to hold to his thought; for even if a navigator anchor to a wrong coast, he will show some quality if he anchor well. But in the same number of the critical journal I flnd it writ- ten concerning a certain verse of Shelley that ''the very irregularity of it is intended to provoke in the reader a vivid sense of the richness and fullness of the skylark* s song,*' and it is remarked further that a certain writer on verse better "might have directed his attention to the ^lendid effects produced by the masters of verse through even slight departures from the basal rhythm,'' and in another number I find an account with much praise of a book on a great poem, saying that the book "is an excel- lent piece of interpretative and critical work," and that " it is, perhaps, to be regretted that the space devoted to the beauty of the lyrical outbursts is not greater.'' M times, then, our critic, when it happens so to befall in the irregular skip of his fancy, finds something more than a droop of the eyelid to bestow on the notion of explaining a poem. Now, I have some things to say to you about this book itself, as fully and freely — indeed, more without reserve than ever hitherto, became the pen hath a veil for me which talk Jmth not — as if we were sitting together, as some of us have done so often, so long and so happily, around the long table, studying of poetic truth. For what these airy fowl, the critics, these sun- eyeing eaglets, these all-knowing Olympians, these semi- deities, and demi- semi deities, and hemi-demi-semi deities, may think or say of me, or whether they say aught of me, is lighter to me than thistledown ; but what you, my near-heart many- few, may think and wish of me and tell to me, hie labor, hoc opus est to my soul. [Vherefore, if you shall learn that some of these masters have set upon me valiantly and said fierce things, be not troubled, I pray you; for even if I shall know of them, it will be but as a wet day which I note without heeding; but it is ten to one I shall not know, for I never yet hunted in papers and magazines to dis- cover what these notables said of me in my humble ten books, or whether they said aught; and now I am less like than ever to do so, since I rest me in you, my friends, who are my domicile, my senate, my great world. In this book all is simple Nature. First, as to sub- stance it is so. I have sought for nothing, nor cast about for occasions or themes or thoughts ''conjured up to serve occasions of poetic pomp,'' but duly and obediently have written what hath been granted me, in puris naturalibus, and every song of them had its one sudden origin and bath the same continuing purpose. 'Belike you might 8 think, because there he just one hundred and fifty of these songs, the major of them, that I staked out in advance just such a parterre, and said, " Go to, now I I will write one hundred and fifty Sonnets." But I counted them not, nor ever knew their number, tmtil I sent the last few of them to press, when, having written till the light failed me, and having then thrown away some three or four, to I there were just one hundred and fifty in all. There is no arrangement of the Sonnets. They were taken mainly in whatever order happened, as they were finished, or at least escaped further dependence on me, and became ready, or, howsoever, set forth. Perhaps some may say the book is far too private, so many of the songs being for you and of you; but this will be an obje^ion which we shall not heed. For you will not he di^leased to meet each other in this way. There is enough for the public if they care for any ; and if there be more for my friends, I am happy so. But, secondly, this book is as simple 0\(ature in style as in matter. Here is no straining and twisting of expression, no contortions of words, no manner of hot writing. I am tempted to say, as Ben Jonson in his ''T)iscoveries," that in poesy ''now nothing is good that is natural. Right and natural language seems to have least of wit in it. That which is writhed and tortured, is counted the more exquisite. Cloth of Bodkin, or Tis- sue, must be embroidered, as if no face were fair that were not powdered or painted. No beauty to be had but in wresting and writhing our own tongue. * * * * There can not he one color of the mind, another of the wit. If the mind he staid, grave and composed, the wit is so; that vitiated, the other is blown and deflowered. * "" * So that we may conclude — M^heresoever man- ners and fashion are corrupted, language is. It imitates the public riot. The excess of feasts and apparel are the notes of a sick State; and the wantonness of language of a sick mind." If "rare Ben" so complain, and seem to forecast much that vapors among us, belike we must think the evil a chronic plague, afftidting all ages; which may make us more patient with the form of sickness now prevailing. Yet surely not the less, hut the more, should we give heed to our own health of taste, that it suffer not, and we should hear our witness. Wherefore I will say, — Whatever poets of the present time write such lines as "The deep, divine, dark day-shine of the sea," let them have their will of them, and their readers their fill of them; but, gentle friends, you will find here no such Simian things (/ mean big antics of body with small intelligence — sound being the body of verse), nor such a heaping up of syllables to the senses similar, but unagree- ing in thought, as if immoderate mass were shape and vehemence music, — not these, but only the natural,unfe- vered melodies that the brooks fiow withal, and the winds, even at their wildest, blow withal. This being so, methinks life is ordained for me as much as anything in Nature. Never yet was a poet killed by these potent errants, the critics, — not bodily 10 killed, and still more not his hook. * Tis said Keats died of the bullying of some of them; hut I never could credit it, for I could not think so admirable a poet such a ninny. The poets live, and if they be poetical to the full measure and favor of it, they will he joyful past attending to dis- praise or even knowing it, and past increase by praise, except by the delight of their friends beloved, for whom they sing with a devoutness. So says "Browning merrily, yet with piety — " Mine's a freehold, by grace of the grand Lord Who lets out the ground here, my landlord ; To him I pay quit-rent, devotion ; Nor hence shall I budge, I've a notion, Nay, here shall my whistling and singing Set all his street's echoes a-ringing Long after the last of your number Has ceased my front court to encumber." ^nd again he says that he writes " Stuff you should stow away, ensconce In the deep and dark, to be found fast fixed At the century's close : such time strength spends A-sweetening for my friends." And 'tis with like meaning that of his lift-up of his readers and their return to a valley -rest afterward, he says, " Shall not my friends go feast again on sward, Though cognizant of country in the clouds Higher than wistful eagle's horny eye Ever unclosed for?" // Such is his faith or foreseeing ; and so will it be with him righteous Ij^, when equally the big "Dogberrys who only scoff at him and the Man- Friday worshipers who fall prostrate to him have gotten themselves once for all into their little bed-places. i/Jnd so hath it been with other poets, a lovely host of them, who still sing audibly and welcomedly above the thick throats of the critics, like either jays or larks — what matter? so they be natural and in place — or the calls of milkmen and the quaint cries of fish-venders and fruit-sellers, and all "the melodies of morn," suitable in V^ature's day, however the morn- fuddled from the night-revel growl. So triumph the songs of real singers; and so methinks your praise, as Cowper says, will ''prober even mine," being approba- tion by laws divine and natural. If so, well; and if not, still well; for I have no quarrel with whatever may be when the minister Time shall have done the will of the King. Now, of the Sonnet — that form of all forms, that moonstone of song, that crystal of opaline facets — / have somewhat to say to you: and this because it is so sadly misconceived and monstrously unknown by many of the critic gentry who talk of it glibly. Chiefly, to the great displeasure of any one who hath understood and loved the Sonnet, these quick folk are given to calling it artifi- cial. ''zA highly artificial form," they say, and other such like expressions, meaning that the Sonnet is a sheer invention, a bit of ingenuity and mechanism wherein some cunning designer hath di^layed himself. Now, I 12 will urge to you, what some of you know very well by long and lovely studies with me, that this precious gem of form is not artificial, nor was made up and patched together wilfully by any one, but is a piece of Nature and belongs in her kingdoms as much as any crystal or any living being of plants or animals. We may imagine a polyp {and therein I take nothing too senseless to figure the confident boldness of these guessing critics) surveying a human face and discoursing critic-wise thus: "Was ever a more artificial thing than this unsimple and much- made-up countenance? Behold what a thing it is, of many diverse parts and multiple appendages, far from the simplicity of my features. Obseroe the forehead fringed with a very different manner of substance, the hair; and hanging out underneath to balance it a sharp protuber- ance, the chin, with again hair pendant, to balance the hair of the top; and- midway a sharp ridge set lengthwise per- pendicularly, called a nose; and below it an opening, set lengthwise horizontally, called a mouth; and above the nose two holes with lids, entering straight inward, called eyes, highly colored with hues unlike anything else in the whole, even unto milk-white and blue and green and green- gray and blue-gray; and at the lower end of the nose two holes entering perpendicularly, without lids, called nostrils; and on each side a big fleshy bulge, exactly balancing, called cheeks; and behind these, two thin and most curiously wrought flag-like parts hung out, called ears, which again have holes in them that enter neither like the eye-holes nor like the nose-holes, but in a third 13 direction transverse to both the others. Tlainly some bold contriver JjatJj patched up an artificial complexity herein. Nature is dire^ and simple, as you behold it in me, the polyp, that have no such assemblage of unlike parts ." — Yet to suppose a polyp to discourse t/jus is to clash reason with reason and put thought against thought by conceiving a creature endowed with reason to deliver himself unreas- oningly, even unto the folly of thinking artificial what is the very top of Nature. Yet this were little worse than our critics do, when they look blind-worm-wise from below at that fiowering- tree-top of form, the Sonnet, and call it artificial. They take one glance, and if they observe something much unlike tJjemselves and apart from what before they have seen, they study it not humbly and closely, but bravely dub it artificial. They found not deeply nor work by Nature's true relationships, but piece things together like tiles, to dance over them. They skill not nor conceive to match them by harmonies of colors or agreements of substance, but patch them one to another in any manner, however tijey be discordant or corrode and crumble one another, so only they make smooth surface for the fantastic toe of their mental motion. For example, thus spake one of them to me scornfully of the Sonnet : ' ' Fourteen lines I IV hy not sixteen ? Or twelve or ten ? ' ' ''My gentle joy," go browse I May a juicy tJjistle befall thee I ^ut do thou, dear friend, who treadest reverently in D^ature's borders, let me show, lest never thou may have thought of it by a happy fall of thy attention to it, why there is a form — as well called Sonnet as by any other 14 name — which is a bloom of Nature as much in Us si{e as in its shape, and could not he sixteen lines, nor more nor less than just fourteen ''but in the estimation of a hair." Suppose some one noble thought present itself, in a kind of naked completeness, unclad with other thoughts, standing forth for the moment suddenly alone. Surely there is naught artificial in that, but it is highly natural, and what certainly will happen to a mind that so long and so faithfully hath known a thought in its logical garments and among its relations, that he is given intimacy to see it alone and, as it were, in the nude ^lendor of it. Given some such one noble thought, it will require a form of utterance of it, not too long to compress the thought finely, which is to say, to show it in its own sun-bath, and not too short to do it justice richly, which is to say {pursuant of my figure of speech), to stretch it in the whole fine stature of it in the free modesty of [h(ature. Now, to serve this requirement of a form for the utterance of one noble thought Imth grown up the Sonnet. It has taken two forms, called the Italian and the English. These proceed by different laws, but each is a natural bloom. Let us attend first to the Italian. The points of structttre of the Italian Sonnet are as follows : 1. The length of the line. 2. The movement of the line. J. The number of lines. 4. The order of the rhymes. 5. Certain internal laws involved in the order of the rhymes and in the length of the whole. ^5 Let me speak of each of these in the order of them, but {for it is not my purpose to write an essay on the Sonnet) as briefly, and even technically, as my aim will admit. The aim is to show that the Sonnet is a piece of U\[ature and not an artifice. Of the Length of the Line. The line is the English heroic; that is, a line of five measures in triple time, each measure having three beats with accent on the first, and typically arranged in one long syllable and one short, occupying respectively the time of two beats and one beat; and the line begins typically with the last beat of a measure. For example, the concluding line of {Milton's famous Sonnet on his blindness, which is typical. — / 1 J / ij ; ij ; ij / 1 J They al - so serve who on - ly stand and wait. The heroic line obviously has ten syllables typically. The choice of this line for the heroic metre is neither acci- dent nor invention, but a matter of Nature, and as pertinent to us as to enjoy the green color of the foliage. Therefore it has been approved by all English poets from Chaucer to this time, and ail the greatest poems have been written in it. It is, and admirably, of just the right length, being not too long for a noble compa^ness (as any one may study by means of the six-measure line — the z/llexandrine — and the noble effect of the long-drawn tone, as it were, of that line, in Spenser's stan:(a, com- pared with what would be the tedium of that stan:(a if it i6 were aU or mainly six-measured), and not too short for stateliness or for easy and free handling. On this latter point, namely, the freedom of the composer in its length, and the consequent grandeur of its scope. Prof. Sylvester in his ''Laws of Verse," peaking of ''Uryden's so strongly and repeatedly giving vent to his sense of free- dom and imshackledness when having ten syllables in a line to deal with instead of eight," says, ''To me the difference between the two seems like that between bathing in a pond or inland creek as compared with a plunge in the open sea; the very embarras de choix, the sense of infinite variety of combination and unlimited room for di^orting the imagination at will, has deterred me from more than timidly venturing upon thisfonfi of verse, as a miniature painter would naturally shrink from trying bis pencil on an historical canvas." I will not burden this page with Prof. Sylvester's mathematics of the freedom of the five-measured as compared with the four-measured line, by which he shows "the facility to be as 120 to 24, i. e., as ^ to I." Suffice it that the heroic line fits to our mental being maroelously, and hath a place in Nature as much as the human intelligence thai so can try wings in it. Moreover, to this virtue of dimension must be added that of having an odd number of measures, and thereby an exact middle measure, which fact greatly enriches its scope and variety in fine phrasings, pauses, symmetries, balancings ; and this virtue extends into the phrasings and balancings of the syllables as sounds no less than as significants. n Of the Movement of the Line : One point under this bead I have mentioned jmt above, namely, the finely variable motion of the heroic line in phrasiiigs and pauses. This I will not expand, though it is wortljy of large treat- ment, hut add only that the typical motion of the line, namely, a long following a short, {called iambic as dis- tinguished from trochaic) instead of the reverse way, hath a virtue and effect of its own which is plain in fa£t and a mystery in being. For it is not explicable how the ear and the rythmic sense of tJje mind so should take hold of a melody as that the movement of it throughout should bang on its beginning with the long or the short. Yet so it is; and poets have counted beautiful, which is tlje same as to say natural, the beginning of the heroic line with the short. Moreover, the triple measure, which makes this movement possible, is germane to the English, whose syllables and words so are framed in triple counts that the whole language is a scanning in that manner. Where- fore the motion of the heroic line is no invention unless English itself be an artifice instead of a growth of Nature; and indeed this triple time arrives from the very dawn of articulation and is to be found in the most primitive tongues, being as natural to our vocality as breathing. Here then we have the primary element of the Sonnet, its line and tJje motion of it, not artificial in any manner, but simply a gift to us of Nature, a gift as unfathomable and all- connected as all U\[ature's bestowments. Of the Number of Lines: That the lines count fourteen, and can be no more and no less, arises from i8 the very principle and stru^ure of this gem of form. Its centrality and radiation may he set forth thus : I. Setting forth. The Ascent. ) 2. Developnnent up to the One J I Turn. Thought.] ^^ , 3_ The Turn, or Transition The Conclusion. to Finale. 4. Finale. To extend this diagram into words: The Sonnet is made of One Thought, presented in two general divisions, namely, the Ascent of the Thought and the Conclusion, these two proceeding by four parts, namely, the Setting forth, or Statement, of the Thought, then the Develop- ment of it up to the Turn, then the Turn, or Transition to, or Preparation for, the Finale, and lastly the Finale or Completion. Now, this stru^ure or motion is wholly natural, not an artifice or invention, but a process of nature; and the length of the Sonnet is determined by it rigorously. For as the Sonnet must have but One Thought, of necessity it must he either diffuse, which never is beauty, or sternly compressed, compared, firm, which is dignity always and may be great beauty, even unto a grandeur. Now, in all composition that runs in time and sequence, it is a principle that the concluding division must be the shortest. ' Tis no matter how many or how long or how varied divisions there may be, the last must be more brief than any other of equal generality and '9 import. If it be asked why tbis is so, I have not inquired wJjether there be an answer in some psychology, ^iit if there be none, 'tis no matter. Enough to say that so it is observed, and a certain brevity of conclusion is found to affect us pleasantly and leave the whole work with a happy symmetry in the mind. Now, if by this principle we examine the conclusion of the Sonnet, we shall see that being in six lines {the Sestet), having three lines for each of its two parts (the Tercets), it is just as it must be. For suppose it be four lines; then there must be either only one rhyme, which would be bad, or two, which then either must be couplets — again bad, not to be admitted in a Sonnet — or a quatrain alternately rhymed, which then bath no marks or natural boundaries as a two- structured conclusion. If five lines, or seven, then would be frus- trated the fine and simple symmetry of rhyme which is so great a beauty in the two tercets. If eight lines, then they must be either in quatrains alternately rhymed, or in couplets, or have at least one couplet, which is bad, or be irregularly rhymed, which also were a sacrifice of a bvely balance. Besides, if so many as either seven or eight lines, then as the first part, the zA scent, must be impres- sively longer, and as impressiveness will require greater difference in length the longer the last part, there would be need of eleven or twelve lines at least in the Ascent, making the whole form eighteen or twenty lines long; and thereupon the fine intense brevity, suitable for one strong or gracious thought, hath disappeared, and also the swiftness of the conclusion — which are virtues of the 20 Sonnet. But six lines in the conclusion give just the right values and effects; of rhyme, because then there may be three rhymes — the best form — or two, without the obtrusion of a couplet ; and of length, because it is swift, yet hath space enough; and with tljis length an advantage of two lines in the Ascent gives enough pre-eminence and weigJjt therein. So then the whole is short enough for one thought compacted, and yet large enough to carry the thought, being a form with the force of two quatrains for developing the thougJjt, and two tercets for its conclusion and binding up. Of the order of the rhymes : That there shall he rhyme in the Sonnet, follows naturally both from its si^e and its richness. For the si^e of the form requires the support of sound, and the riclmess of it is tJje availing itself of the finest qualities and resources natural in syllables. Tijere be some persons, and even some called critics, who ^eali slightingly of tljat fine reminiscence of the ear named rhyme. But as well might they obje^ to the harmonies and repetitions of tones in music as to the like in syllables, which are tones, in some points unlike, but in some excelling, tJje quality of music-tones. And it is naught that in rhyme the harmonies are sequences, instead of being struck at one moment as in music; for in music too ttje progression of chords hath an element and value akin to rtoyme, and in verse the detention of tone, winch is a happy power of the ear, is like that temporary persistence of a light in the eye, whereby a revolving ^ark becomes not a moving point of gbw, but 21 a shining circle. ' Tis tme that rhyme, like many har- monies and progressions and good effects in music, may be used ill, and true also that sometimes 'tis to be omitted well, as in music there is place for passages in unison. But to object to rhyme in the whole, is such a flouting of wide and lovely ranges of qualities in syllables and the fine accord of the ear therewith, that I know not whetJoer denial of it be an affe^ation such as may be su^pe^ed in whoever vaunts superiority to any delight; or a dim folly akin to asceticism, a defamation of a certain sweetness and overflow of life and color, like Pascal's monstrous aversion to his sister's kissing her children; or a plain ignorance which hath caught at some pretense and echoes it around its windy caverns. Either way, I wiU take no notice of it, but accept gladly what I find nobly resonant, and §peak of its place and property in the Sonnet. As I write, my girls are singing rapturously close by me, now in two parts, now with one voice, now with two in unison, anon again in harmonies, in and out with spark- ling varieties and every quality of the virtue of tones. And shall I put some away, — like a cast of one hue over the prism, — or know not the like in syllables? O, away with your dull parsimonies ! I will be rich with the whole of Nature. The Sonnet is to be musical, fair with the sweet sound- values of syllables in all their means for beauty; therefore there will be some rhyme. But again it is to be marked by dignity, impressiveness, force, reserve, compression; therefore the rhymes will be few, comporting with the 22 strong and severe simpleness of manner in the Sonnet, and affecting the ear in exactly right proportion, not obtruding past their due office in that verse. Therefore, also, as rhyme is not to be omitted, being a force of beauty, and yet not to be multiplied in kinds, there must be repe- tition of the few rhymes; and the repeating of them must be in such way as to preserve the fine monotone and yet not cause the ringing or jingling of one vowel. Again, the placing of the rhymes must have a regularity, for this is form and dignity, and moreover hath a possibility of use with a purpose and power inhering in that form. Now, these natural conditions are obtained in the Sonnet by the prevailing of only two rhymes in the whole Octave, and these so disposed in the quatrains (inside and outside rhymes) as to attain the greatest dignity by remote echoes which delight the memory-power of the ear and require the full virtues of its attention and perception. Hence, also, the rule that these rhymes so are to be treated in the perfect Sonnet as not to come to a concluding couplet anywhere. And now coming to the Sestet, in the first Tercet of which occurs the Turn of the Thought to the Conclusion, it is proper, and indeed we rightly may say inevitable, that this Turn of the Thought should be marked by new quality and order in the rhyme. It is so; and here again, as in the Octave, the principle of a certain remoteness of echo obtains and gives a charming music with also a lovely dignity; for in the best form of the Sonnet, most loved and written by the greatest masters, there are three rhymes in the Sestet, the latter Tercet rhyming with the first 23 one line by line, so that each line- end bath its mate in an echo three lines away — a very beautiful sound-order whose equal charm and soberness to the ear are very notable. Yet, though this be the finest, 'tis held by all poets that there are others which are suitable, and hence there is a liberty of choice in the Sestet, while the form of the Octave must be observed with tloe strict obedience due to its place, purpose and perfedtness. This liberty in the Sestet is another natural grace and virtue of the Sonnet; for it grants a variety at need, and this just where it should be, namely, in the conclusion, which thus may be brought to some §pecial agreement with some peculiar effect or purpose in the Octave. But now here I can not stop, in peaking of the rhymes, without recurring to the natural dimensions of the Sonnet; for the laws of the rhymes lead dire^y to the length of it. For why, it may be asked, should not the principle of odd numbers, that they afford the grace of symmetry, be applied to make quintrains rather than quatrains the steps of the Ascent of the Sonnet. The answer is in the law of the rhymes ; for these so are dis- posed as actually to effect in even lines the symmetry of odd lines and their balance on a center. For the two inside rtoymes, i. e. of the second and third lines of the quatrain, effect a central unity as of one line or portion, on each side whereof the outside rhymes cause the first and fourth lines to balance finely. Moreover, not only thus do the rhymes, so disposed, have effect like a balance of an odd number on the central digit in a beautiful 24 manner, but there is also in this way a perfect balance of the rhyming sounds themselves round a real, but invisible and inaudible, axis — on both sides thereof a perfect sym- metry, — which all would be done away in a quint rain. For in a quintrain there must be either a greater weight of some rJjy me- sound, or else one line nnrhymed. Wherefore all poets have leaned to the quatrain form, showing a general ear for it and natural approval. As the rhymes thus lead to the quatrain by these admirable balances, and bind thus the quatrain into a unity, so also do they lead to the Tercets. For as there is a turn of purpose or fun^ion at that point in the Sonnet, so it is suitable and natural, as I have said, indeed, inevitable, that the point should be marked by a change of rhyme. Now this change may be either in the sounds or in the succession, and the largest effect and richest contrast will concur with both changes at once. This is accomplished in the Tercets. For in t/je finest and most valued form of Sestet, as above described, there is a total change of rhyme-sound, and an equaliy notable change in the number of the rhymes, and these are di^osed in a succession whose contrast with the quatrains is as extreme as can be, nor is there any other form beside the Sestet of two Tercets in which the contrast of arrange- ment of sounds against t/je Octave of two quatrains could be so great. Yet this contrast in the rhymes and in the order of them is marked with the same dignity, the same balance on an aerial axis, and the same delicate remoteness of echo, that are charms in the O^ave rhymes. 25 You will observe in the foregoing that I have not known from what trait to treat the Sonnet first, whether from the rhyme or from the length; for I was compelled to refer to the rhymes in treating of the length, and again to the length in speaking of the rhymes. For the length so depends on the rhymes, and again the rhymes on the length, that they are mutually involved and inseparable. 'But let any one contemplate these elements together — if this account of the Sonnet be reasonable — then how vain and ignorant will it seem to call that generous and fine form artificial I For plainly up out of the properties of time, rhythm and sound in §peech the Sonnet hath grown as naturally as afiowering tree out of the earth. If now it be asked — Why and how are all these effe^s done on us? Why like we the finale to be shorter than foregoing parts? Why enjoy we the symmetry of balances on a dividing line? Why have we so much pleasure in the line of five measures? Why delight we in a triple time in Speech? Why are we charmed with recurrent phrasings? Why do rhythmic pauses enchant us? Why doth the beginning with unaccented beat move ns through- out the line magically? Why hath the quatrain so great echo in us? Why is likeness of tones so rich a food to our ears? Why have sequences of sounds, progressions of vowels and echoes of consonants, such mysterious attra^ions ? Why are some sequences light, trifiing, and some dignified, noble? Why is a change of sound with change of thought excellent ? — // we ask these questions, I cannot answer. As I have said, 'tis simply observable 26 and perceptible that these things are so. And why is the grass green instead of red? And why are we charmed with it? And why are the heavens like crimson seas at sunrise or sunset ? And why is it glorious to us ? Why are some smells delicious and some noxious to us? And why are some two or several tones together harmo- nious and sweet to us, and some others discordant and jarring? For it is observable that some creatures delight in odors which to us are vexatious. zAnd any creature is pleased with noises or cries made by itself, how strident or discordant soever to other ears. Why are these things so ? We cannot tell. O^or can we follow anything beyond a question or two without coming to the unquestionable and unanswering. IVe have to take these things as har- monies divine and natural, and our love of them as being our blessed oneness with them in "the One in the Many." To those of you, beloved friends for whom I write, who have sat with me around the long table these many years, the above discourse will be but the condensing of many and long and happy expansions and discussions; and to others, though I acknowledge it too brief and needing unfoldment at different points, yet I pray you forgive this, as it seemed the better way, and consider that it hath this advantage, namely, that whoever will unfold the whole for themselves by applying it to many different Sonnets and working it out in them, will attain a far better apprehen- sion of the Sonnet-form as a growth of U^ature than could be conveyed to them by any expansions done for them in these limits, perhaps in any limits. 27 Of the English Sonnet : The English Sonnet con- sists of three quatrains, each alternately rhymed, and a concluding couplet. It is very much simpler in structure and laws than the Italian, hut equally is remote from invention, being truly a natural produ^ and an organ- ism. c/JU that in the foregoing has been said about the quatrain, applies to the same of course as an element or formal part in the English Sonnet-form, and need not be repeated here. c/HI- that has been said touching the Son- net as a vehicle for one worthy thought and for a strong comparing of that thought into a tense expression, fits to the English form as well as to the Italian. Likewise suits equally what has been said of the line of five measitres. In these points the Italian and the English agree, and equally are growths of Nature, not artifices of men. The traits wherein the English form differs from the Italian, are three, namely, the law of the rhymes, the threefold development, and the peculiar conclusion by a couplet. Touching the rhymes, the English Sonnet hath the utmost possible variety of sweet musical eclooes, attained by alter- nate rhyming in the quatrains {a highly natural and inevitable manner as old as rhyme itself), and not only by rhymes contrasted well in one quatrain, but by quatrains richly varied and contrasting in rhyme with each other, and by the concluding couplet. The couplet again should rhyme with sounds diverse from any in the endings of the quatrain lines. This is the typical and most resourceful manner of the rhymes if handled masterfully; but it is varied much and with sundry lovely effeks of monotones 28 or combinations, by poets who can finger aU the keys and stops of t/je organ of their art. Tlje concluding couplet fulfiUs the law that fide finale must be the shortest of the integral parls, but in a very peculiar and striliing manner. In the perfect English Sonnet, the couplet is an epigram, re-uttering the sub- stance, or the one tJjougJjt, of tlje Sonnet, or at least a condensed and manifest consequence or issue of it, in a swift, sententious, penetrating style, having tlje inevitable eloquence of a sufficient thought pressed into small space, and thus binding together and clasping as with a golden hand all the argument and imagery of the Sonnet.