Some thoughts on the sonnet
The sonnet (from the Italian sonneto meaning little poem with musical accompaniment) was developed in Italy around the 13th century. By the 14th under its accomplished master Petrarch its form had been established as a reflective love poem of 14 lines with five beats or stressed syllables per line We would usually describe this form as iambic pentameter. The verse was always divided into two parts, the first eight lines (octet) and the final six (sestet) with a pause between them indicating a change of mood or thought. Different rhyme schemes were also common at different times and characteristically used by different poets.
The sonnet-form appeared in England in the around 1557, early exponents being Lord Howard, Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt. My favourite of these early verses is Edward Spencer's ‘Kilcoran strand’ONE day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Agayne I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tyde, and made my paynes his pray.
Vayne men, sayd she, that doest in vaine assay,
A mortall thing so to immortalize,
For I my selve shall lyke to this decay,
And eek my name bee wyped out lykewize.
Not so, (quod I) let baser things devize
To dy in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,
And in the hevens wryte your glorious name.
Where whenas death shall al the world subdew,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.I like the wonderful image of the wave washing his lover’s name away and her spirited rebuke at his attempt to preserve her memory, followed by his forthright affirmation of his love through his verse. Although the image is fresh and original, the sentiment, that while time decays all, his art will endure, is repeated again and again in the short verse of the time. We see this repeatedly in possibly the greatest collection of sonnets written in English –those of Shakespeare. He again stamped his own print on the form by normally using 4 quatrains (groups of 4 rhyming lines) and a final couplet, but he often still used a pause or change of pace between the octet and the sestet to denote the usual change of mood or argument. But while the themes are sometimes conventional the energy with which he expresses them and the richness of the language he uses is a world apart from the stock lyrics of his lesser contemporaries:
Sonnet XXIX
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.Once again the reader is supposed to be convinced by the theme of the final six lines that the thought of his love is of such comfort that it banishes all despair. However for me, the first images are the more convincing and Shakespeare uses the conventional sonnet form in an altogether original and more varied way to describe the shame and desperation of his ‘outcast state’ in terms that are still contemporary rather than conventional.
The acknowledged master of the sonnet in English in the seventeenth century was John Milton. Again a great poet can adapt an existing form and give it their own distinctive stamp. Milton was a parliamentary secretary, deeply involved in the political events around the time of the civil war, yet he was also a very religious man with a devout faith that provided him with enormous strength and endurance. He used the sonnet form not for the usual standard expressions of the besotted lover, but as a way of communicating his own personal feelings about his faith and the intimate events of his life. The loss of his sight, due to overwork, a tragic event for a man of letters, was the cause for him to write one of his greatest sonnets ‘On his blindness’
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-labor, 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."The final sentiment has been much quoted, but the feelings it leaves the reader with are admiration for the fortitude and quiet devotion of the poet expressed in with such simple yet beautiful phrases. Milton surely has adapted the sonnet for his own original and personal expression with great sincerity.
Andrew Nash