Red-Headed

In this follow up to my last blog I would like to take a look at some of the variations on the sonnet as a form. The five poems below are all essentially 'sonnets' but they have their own peculiarities & nuances.

The Spensarian sonnet


One day I wrote her name upon the Strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide and made my pains his prey.
Vain man (said she), that dost in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalise;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise,
Not so (quod I); let baser things devise
To lie in dust, but you shall live by fame;
My verse your virtues rare shall eternise,
And in the heavens write your glorious name:
Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.



A popular theme with the Elizabethans, poetry to promote some sort of immortality can become clichéd unless done with care. Spenser utilised a form which is a good compromise with the Petrarchan four-rhymed sonnet & the seven rhymes of the Shakespearean. It interlocks the rhyme scheme ABABBCBCCDCDEE.

The Caudate sonnet

Hurrahing in Harvest Gerard Manley Hopkins


SUMMER ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! What lovely
behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to go glean our Saviour;
And éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic ¬– as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet! –
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his
feet.



This is written in Hopkins’s sprung & outstanding rhythm. The outriding feet are typical of his poetry. Note the alliteration. Hopkins claims that this sonnet was “the outcome of half an hour of extreme enthusiasm as I walked home alone one day from fishing in the Elwy.” His theories on metre are complex. Essentially he believed that in common English only two metric feet are really possible: The accentual trochee & dactyl. These can be combined to create logaoedic rhythm. Because this would be repetitive other feet are interspersed between. This gives an effect that Hopkins named counterpoint (from the musical term). He believed that Milton was the true master of this rhythm, particularly in the choruses of his Sampson Agonistes. Note the extra tail (or caudate) of the last line.

Notice also how the alliteration & repeated words seem to give the reader a feeling of the swirling wind mentioned in the second line. Hopkins has been in & out of fashion for decades. He has been compared to having as much literary influence as Shakespeare or Dante & yet, has sometimes been ignored completely. Some have compared his love of nature with the poetry of the Pre- Raphaelites.

I would like to look at three more poems, the first two are variations on the standard Italian or Petrarchan, but the last one is a different take on the sonnet entirely. Many people would argue whether it could be called a sonnet at all. I believe it does in fact have some of the criteria which can qualify it as one.

It has often been said that the Miltonic sonnet is essentially an English sonnet without a turn or volta. This is an interesting example of a variant of the Italian sonnet, a form often employed by Milton. The first two stanzas are the traditional ABBA ABBA, but the last six lines are CDE DCE. There is a definite volta at the eighth line starting with the adverbial conjunctive yet. He made this particular sonnet look very easy, but don’t be fooled by the apparent mellifluous ease that Milton seemed to engender with his use of rhyme and metre. You cannot help but notice that there is no real mawkishness or sentimentality in this poem. It is very decisive & without needless superfluity.


On Being Arrived at Twenty-Three Years of Age

HOW soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth
That I to manhood am arrived so near
And inward ripeness doth much less appear
That some timely-happy spirits indu'th.
Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which time leads me, and the will of Heaven,
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Task-Master’s eye.


Matthew Arnold (1822-88) was an Oxford educated schools inspector, better known for his literary criticism & poems such as his religiously inspired Dover Beach & the long narrative Sohrab & Rustum than his ability to write sonnets.

He is responsible for the introduction of the the term Philistine, borrowed partially from Heinrich Heine, to represent the intellectually incurious. He may not have had the sheer lyricism of Tennyson or the copious energy of Robert Browning but he was in the top three or four poets of the mid nineteenth century. G.K. Chesterton believed that our obligations to Arnold were almost beyond expression & that “His very faults reformed us”.

Rachel

In Paris all look’d hot and like to fade.
Sere in the garden of the Tuileries,
Sere with September, droop’d the chestnut-trees.
‘Twas dawn; a brougham roll’d through the streets and made

Halt at the white and silent colonnade
Of the French Theatre. Worn with disease,
Rachael with eyes no gazing can appease,
Sate in the brougham and those blank walls suvey’d.

She follows the gay world, whose swarms have fled
‘To Switzerland , to Baden, to the Rhine;
Why stops she by this empty play-house drear?

Ah, where the spirit its highest life led,
All spots, match’d with that spot, are less divine;
And Rachael’s Switzerland, her Rhine is here !

This is another take on the Italian sonnet. Arnold had some variations on the sonnet theme, but this is one of his most successful. It is in fact part of a triptych dedicated to the eponymous Rachel.

Arnold was a bit out of step with his Victorian counterparts & believed they should learn three things: “the all-importance of the choice of a subject; the necessity of accurate construction; and the subordinate character of expression”.

I think he has achieved all of those here quite admirably. He was also a great literary critic of his time. He particularly admired Wordsworth;“Wordsworth was a great critic, and it is to be sincerely regretted that he has not left us more criticism….”

Matthew Arnold is mostly famous for lyric poems like Dover Beach & elegiacs such as The Scholar-Gypsy. Rachel was written in July 1863 after the death of the actress he had seen perform in his youth, & who had left such a deep impression on him.



Blondes

They pass me with bland looks.
It is the simplicity of their lives
I ache for: prettiness and a soft heart, no problems
Not to be bought to life size
By a kiss or a smile. I see them walking
Up long streets with the accuracy of shuttles
At work, threads crossed to make a pattern
Unknown to them. A thousand curtains
Are parted to welcome home
The husbands who have overdrawn
On their blank trust, giving them children
To play with, a jingle of small change
For their pangs. The tear-laden tree
Of a poet strikes no roots in their hearts.

R.S. Thomas was born in Cardiff in 1913. Graduating at the University College of North Wales at Bangor he then worked as Rector of Manafon, Montgomeryshire & later worked as a vicar in Cardiganshire for many years. A traditional & local poet in many ways, his verse often showed its central subject & eventual delineation to exhibit a developing knowledge of the real & the illusory. Sometimes subjective or in the objective awareness of others this was frequently developed from a sense of enforced intimacy. He died on the 25th of September 2000.

Although this does not appear to have a traditional rhyme scheme the scansion is developed by the use of some alliteration, assonance & the use of sibilants & palatals to create an interesting aural effect. These sounds can be quite prevalent in the Welsh accent & I think give this poem a richness in sound & design.

The volta halfway through the eighth line is not at first obviously apparent, but it is there & does push the piece towards its inevitable resolution. I fervently believe that this does in fact exhibit enough qualifiers to be pronounced as a sonnet. The last line ties the poetical sentiment to the author & totally removes the slightly patronising tone that seems to be on the verge of developing. Thomas was a man of deep sympathy with the human condition & with the plight of humanity. His choice of career almost certainly reflects this.

I shall discuss some more variations of the sonnet in later blogs.

Bibliography as with earlier blog.