Part 12 (2/2)
For a verse-maker to give his sonnet this requisite flow and ebb of idea, and keep at the same time his rhyme scheme accurate is no easy matter. And the very difficulty of the form is a strong argument in favor of its frequent use by novices in versification. If you can write a sonnet that is technically correct, you need fear none of the difficulties that any other kind of verse-making will present. The accuracy and condensation, the concentration of thought, the straight-forwardness of statement, which are the distinguis.h.i.+ng marks of the well-turned sonnet are the most valuable tools which a verse writer can have. In writing, as well as he can, one sonnet, the verse-maker will learn more than he could learn in writing half a dozen ballads or twenty volumes full of unrhymed free verse.
This book is intended for the guidance not of poets but of verse-makers.
Yet I cannot forbear quoting Watts-Dunton's admirable statement of the whole content of the sonnet. He writes: ”Without being wholly artificial, like the rondeau, the sestina, the ballade, the villanelle, and the rest, the sonnet is yet so artistic in structure, its form is so universally known, recognized, and adopted as being artistic, that the too fervid spontaneity and reality of the poet's emotion may be in a certain degree veiled, and the poet can whisper, as from behind a mask, those deepest secrets of the heart which could otherwise only find expression in purely dramatic forms.”
As I said, the simplest, and in some respects, the most difficult form of sonnet, has for the rhyme scheme _a, b, b, a, a, b, b, a, c, d, c, d, c, d_. But there is a tendency to vary the rhyme scheme in the sestet--the octave usually is unchanged. One common variation is to have the rhymes of the sestet _c, d, e, c, d, e_, instead of _c, d, c, d, c, d_. This is the scheme we find followed in the sestet of two of ”Three Sonnets on Oblivion,” by a distinguished American poet, Mr. George Sterling.
THREE SONNETS OF OBLIVION
BY GEORGE STERLING
_Oblivion_
Her eyes have seen the monoliths of kings Upcast like foam of the effacing tide; She hath beheld the desert stars deride The monuments of power's imaginings: About their base the wind a.s.syrian flings The dust that throned the satrap in his pride; Cambyses and the Memphian pomps abide As in the flame the moth's presumptuous wings.
There gleams no glory that her hand shall spare, Nor any sun whose days shall cross her night, Whose realm enfolds man's empire and its end.
No armour of renown her sword shall dare, No council of the G.o.ds withstand her might-- Stricken at last Time's lonely t.i.tans bend.
_The Night of G.o.ds_
Their mouths have drunken the eternal wine-- The draught that Baal in oblivion sips.
Unseen about their courts the adder slips, Unheard the sucklings of the leopard whine; The toad has found a resting-place divine, And bloats in stupor between Ammon's lips.
O Carthage and the unreturning s.h.i.+ps, The fallen pinnacle, the s.h.i.+fting Sign!
Lo! when I hear from voiceless court and fane Time's adoration of eternity,-- The cry of kingdoms past and G.o.ds undone,-- I stand as one whose feet at noontide gain A lonely sh.o.r.e; who feels his soul set free, And hears the blind sea chanting to the sun.
In these two sonnets, you see, Mr. Sterling has in his sestet the rhymes _c, d, e, c, d, e_, thus having more license than the poet of the sonnet in four rhymes. He uses the same number of rhymes in the final sonnet of this trilogy, but varies the order of the rhymes in the sestet, having for his scheme not _c, d, e, c, d, e_, but _c, d, d, e, c, e_. One objection to this method is that it produces, as you see, a rhymed couplet in the midst of the sestet.
_The Dust Dethroned_
Sargon is dust, Semiramis a clod.
In crypts profaned the moon at midnight peers; The owl upon the Sphinx hoots in her ears, And scant and dere the desert gra.s.ses nod Where once the armies of a.s.syria trod, With younger sunlight splendid on the spears; The lichens cling the closer with the years, And seal the eyelids of the weary G.o.d.
Where high the tombs of royal Egypt heave, The vulture shadows with arrested wings The indecipherable boasts of kings, Till Arab children hear their mother's cry And leave in mockery their toy--they leave The skull of Pharaoh staring at the sky.
It is seldom that we find such a couplet as: ”The vulture shadows with arrested wings, The indecipherable boasts of kings,” in the midst of the sestet. But there are many verse writers who use the couplet, unrelated in rhyme to the rest of the sestet, to conclude the sonnet. This of course was Shakespeare's method, but Shakespeare, as we have seen, was not making Petrarchan sonnets. The great danger is that the final couplet will give the conclusion of the sonnet too much of a snap, too much of an epigrammatic flavor. Therefore it is well to avoid this device, although it cannot be denied that some of the greatest sonnets in the language end in a couplet. Some years ago I asked a number of English and American poets and critics to name their favorite brief poems. Many of them chose sonnets, and one of them, Mr. Edward J.
Wheeler, a critic of experience and discrimination, for many years the President of the Poetry Society of America, selected a sonnet ending in a couplet--Blanco White's ”Night.” It may be remarked that this famous sonnet is almost the only one of Blanco White's many compositions to escape oblivion.
NIGHT
BY JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE
Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus with the host of heaven came, And lo! creation widened in man's view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find, Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed, That to such countless...o...b.. thou mad'st us blind!
Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife?
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?
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