Sonnets and Canzonets

For ’twas the selfsame stalk that bore the flower;
Soft fell the rain, and, breaking from above,
The sun looked out upon our nuptial hour;
And I had thought forever by thy side
With bursting buds of hope in youth to dwell;
But one by one Time strewed thy petals wide,
And every hope’s wan look a grief can tell;
For I had thoughtless lived beneath his sway,
Who like a tyrant dealeth with us all, —
Crowning each rose, though rooted in decay,
With charms that shall the spirit’s love enthral,
And, for a season, turn the soul’s pure eyes
From virtue’s bloom that time and death defies.”

Out of this valley of sadness the spirit rises on bolder wing, as the melancholy mood passes away, —

“Hearts of eternity, hearts of the deep!
Proclaim from land to sea your mighty fate;
How that for you no living comes too late,
How ye cannot in Theban labyrinth creep,
How ye great harvests from small surface reap,
Shout, excellent band, in grand primeval strain,
Like midnight winds that foam along the main, —
And do all things rather than pause to weep.
A human heart knows naught of littleness,
Suspects no man, compares with no one’s ways,
Hath in one hour most glorious length of days,
A recompense, a joy, a loveliness;
Like eaglet keen, shoots into azure far,
And always dwelling nigh is the remotest star.”

Here, as Landor said, “is a sonnet, and the sonnet admits not that approach to the prosaic which is allowable in the ballad.” For this reason Mr. Alcott, who began his poetical autobiography, when he was eighty years old, in a ballad measure, has now passed into the majesty of the sonnet, as he has come to those passages of life which will not admit prosaic treatment. Moderately used, and not worked to death, as Wordsworth employed it, the sonnet is a great uplifter of poesy. It calls to the reader, as the early Christian litanies did to the worshipper, Sursum corda, Raise your thoughts! The canzonet lets us down again into the pathetic, the humorous, or the fanciful, – though in this volume the canzonet generally betokens sadness. It may easily become an ode, as in the verses on Garfield: indeed the ode may be considered as an extended canzonet, or the canzonet as a brief ode. It is the sonnet that chiefly concerns us now, and that form of the sonnet which deals with love; since the germ of this book was a romance of love, seeking to express itself in the uplifting strain and tender cadence of successive sonnets; which lead us though green pastures and beside the still waters, and then to the shore of the resounding sea, – itself worthy of a sonnet which I have somewhere heard: —

“Ah mournful Sea! Yet to our eyes he wore
The placid look of some great god at rest;
With azure arms he clasped the embracing shore,
While gently heaved the billows of his breast;
We scarce his voice could hear, and then it seemed
The happy murmur of a lover true,
Who, in the sweetness of his sleep, hath dreamed
Of kisses falling on his lips like dew.
Far off, the blue and gleaming hills above,
The Sun looked through his veil of thinnest haze,
As coy Diana, blushing at her love,
Half hid with her own light her earnest gaze,
When on the shady Latmian slope she found
Fair-haired Endymion slumbering on the ground.”

This is one picture in the kaleidoscope of Aphrodite, who was a sea-born goddess, and partial to her native element. Yet it is not through the eye alone that she ensnares us, but with the music of birds, – and in poetry her own darling bird is not the dove, but the nightingale, – a stranger to our orchards and forests, but familiar to the groves of the Muse. A poet, by no means happy in his love in after years, thus saluted this bird, with music as sweet as her own, —

“O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray,
Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still,
Thou with fresh hope the lover’s heart doth fill,
While the jolly Hours lead on propitious May.
Thy liquid notes, that close the eye of day,
First heard before the shallow cuckoo’s bill,
Portend success in love; O, if Jove’s will
Have linked that amorous power to thy soft lay,
Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate
Foretell my hopeless doom in some grove nigh;
As thou from year to year hast sung too late
For my relief, yet hadst no reason why;
Whether the Muse, or Love call thee his mate,
Both them I serve, and of their train am I.”

This is plainly a fabricated song, not poured out from the heart, though full of melodious fancy. More natural and earnest is the tone in which our poet soon after praises one who had passed unheeding by the bower of love, and devoted herself to a life of piety and good deeds. We cannot guess who she was, but such saints are seen in every land and age.

“Lady, that in the prime of earliest youth
Wisely hast shunned the broad way and the green,
And with those few art eminently seen
That labor up the hill of heavenly truth, —
The better part with Mary and with Ruth,
Chosen thou hast; and they that overween,
And at thy growing virtues fret their spleen,
No anger find in thee, but pity and ruth.
Thy care is fixed, and zealously attends
To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light,
And hope that reaps not shame. Therefore be sure
Thou, when the bridegroom with his feastful friends
Passes to bliss at the mid hour of night,
Hast gained thy entrance, virginwise and pure.”

It is a truth for the initiated that love begins with worship, and favors piety in its first approaches; and we need not wonder if the devout poet in due time paid his amorous addresses to this bride of the Spirit, whose lamp must have been dim, indeed, if it did not reveal to her the lover in disguise of the brother in Israel. A poet of our day, in a sonnet somewhat faulty in form, but true to the faith of your pilgrim-vow, ye happy palmers of Love, —

“O voi che per la via d’Amor passate!”

has written as follows: —

“‘As calmest waters mirror Heaven the best,
So best befit remembrances of thee
Calm holy hours from earthly passion free,
Sweet twilight musing, – Sabbaths in the breast.
No stooping thought, nor any grovelling care,
The sacred whiteness of that place shall stain,
Where, far from heartless joys and rites profane,
Memory has reared to thee an altar fair.
Yet frequent visitors shall kiss the shrine,
And ever keep its vestal lamp alight;
All noble thoughts, all dreams divinely bright,
That waken or delight this soul of mine.’