Page images
PDF
EPUB

The sonnet

The sonnet is a lyric form bound by rigorous rules. It is an isolated stanza used to develop a single idea or feeling; and it requires fourteen iambic pentameter lines. The Petrarchan sonnet, named from the Italian poet, Petrarch, is divided into two sections of six and eight lines, each section having a rhyme system of its own. The first section of eight lines is the octave; the second section of six lines is the sestet. In the Shakespearean sonnet, the fourteen lines fall into three quatrains and a concluding couplet.

The sonnet is a difficult pattern to use, since it must express a complete idea or feeling within the narrow limits of fourteen lines arranged in a specific verse form allowing slight deviation. Notice the rhyme schemes in the following sonnets, the first by Shakespeare, the second, a Petrarchan form, by Wordsworth.

[blocks in formation]

1.

"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 possesst,
Despising 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 remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings."

a

b

a

b

с

d

d

e

e

f

g

g

Shakespeare

[ocr errors]

Octave

Sestet

2.

"The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are upgather'd now, like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."

Wordsworth

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

There has been a tendency on the part of modern poets to revolt from definite patterns. Strict metrical laws and definite rhyme schemes seem to them irksome, Free verse artificial, and unnecessary. They have, therefore, adapted the rhythm and rhyme schemes of their verses to the feeling of their poems without regard to definite stanza forms. In their revolt from conventional forms they call their poetry free verse. The patterns of free verse are not bound by set rules, but they are defined by recurrent rhythms and often by rhyme. No beauty can be entirely formless. The writers of free verse escape from the artificial restrictions of conventional patterns, but not from the laws of form and harmony. Free verse is often a beautiful medium for the expression of a poet's ideas and feelings, but it is not necessarily a more satisfactory medium than a definite stanza form. Amy Lowell's Patterns is an excellent example of a free verse form that is truly organic. The two following contemporary poems by Carl Sandburg show the use of "untrammeled” rhythm and illustrate the beauties and the limitations of the "new poetry."

"PEARL HORIZONS

Under a prairie fog moon

in a circle of pearl mist horizons,
a few lonesome dogs scraping thongs,
midnight is lonely; the fog moon midnight
takes up again its even smooth November.

Memories: you can flick me and sting me.
Memories, you can hold me even and smooth.

A circle of pearl mist horizons

is not a woman to be walked up to and kissed, nor a child to be taken and held for a good-night, nor any old coffee-drinking pal to be smiled at in

the eyes and left with a grip and a handshake. Pearl memories in the mist circling the horizon, flick me, sting me, hold me even and smooth."

"SAND SCRIBBLINGS

The wind stops, the wind begins.
The wind says stop, begin.

A sea shovel scrapes the sand floor.
The shovel changes, the floor changes.

The sandpipers, maybe they know.
Maybe a three-pointed foot can tell.
Maybe the fog moon they fly to, guesses.

The sandpipers cheep 'Here' and get away.
Five of them fly and keep together flying.

Night hair of some sea woman

Curls on the sand when the sea leaves
The salt tide without a good-by.

Boxes on the beach are empty.

Shake 'em and the nails loosen.
They have been somewhere." 1

1 Reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Brace and Company.

It is a mistake, however, to think of free verse as an exclusive product of recent years. Poets have always broken away from conventional patterns whenever they have found a freer pattern more suited to their purposes. Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach, for example, is almost as much free verse as Amy Lowell's Patterns.

The pattern

and the sub

ject matter

The poet chooses a pattern which fits his subject matter. The sonnet is an excellent pattern in which to develop a single idea by first giving illustrations (in the octave) and then stating the idea directly (in the sestet). The Spenserian stanza is an excellent pattern in which to work up to a climax at the end of the stanza; it is also well adapted to elaborate ornamentation. The ottava rima has the advantage of being neither too long nor too short; it is also well adapted to musical expression. The quatrain is appropriate for any simple story or simple feeling that requires simple expression. The couplet gives an excellent opportunity for driving ideas home brilliantly so that they will linger in the mind; it also gives rapidity of movement. Blank verse is the best medium for the expression of profound or dignified feeling, or noble ideas. The pattern of a song should be spontaneously lyrical, with haunting refrains or lilting music.

Tennyson's Bugle Song illustrates the blending in a perfect pattern of meter, rhymes, choice of words, and stanza form.

"The splendor falls on castle walls

And snowy summits old in story;

The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!

O, sweet and far from cliff and scar

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!

Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,

They faint on hill or field or river;
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
for ever and for ever.

And grow

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying."

The appropriateness of every detail of the pattern is here apparent. The echoes are wonderfully suggested in the internal rhymes, in the choice of vowel sounds, and in the lingering feminine endings of the refrain. The refrain itself is perfectly suggestive of answering echoes; it has just enough variation in each stanza to carry the thought and the music on from one stanza to another. Practically every device for securing tone color is used here: beautifully varied vowel sounds, liquid and sibilant consonants, rhymes exquisitely tuned to both feeling and sense. Many of Tennyson's poems are splendid illustrations of pattern of sound and color and feeling perfectly blended. Sweet and Low is an obvious example. Maud is a poem which he loved to read aloud, because in it music and form shift instinctively with the feeling.

A THREEFOLD DIVISION OF POETRY

2

The various subject matter of poetry can be brought under three general headings: the poetry of reflection, the poetry of incident, and the poetry of feeling. All poetry that primarily seeks to teach a lesson or to impress an idea on the reader is poetry of reflection. All poetry that seeks primarily to tell a story is poetry of incident. All poetry that seeks primarily to express the feeling of the poet or of the

« PreviousContinue »