English Literature for Boys and Girls Part 32

The Sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines, and is perhaps the most difficult kind of poem to write. It is divided into two parts.

The first part has eight lines and ought only to have two rimes.

That is, supposing we take words riming with love and king for our rimes, four lines must rime with love and four with king.

The rimes, too, must come in a certain order. The first, fourth, fifth and eighth lines must rime, and the second, third, sixth, and seventh. This first part is called the octave, from the Latin word octo, eight. The second part contains six lines, and is therefore called the s.e.xtet, from the Latin word s.e.x, meaning six. The s.e.xtet may have either two or three rimes, and these may be arranged in almost any order. But a correct sonnet ought not to end with a couplet, that is two riming lines. However, very many good writers in English do so end their sonnets.

As the sonnet is so bound about with rules, it often makes the thought which it expresses sound a little unreal. And for that very reason it suited the times in which Wyatt lived. In those far-off days every knight had a lady whom he vowed to serve and love. He took her side in every quarrel, and if he were a poet, or even if he were not, he wrote verses in her honor, and sighed and died for her. The lady was not supposed to do anything in return; she might at most smile upon her knight or drop her glove, that he might be made happy by picking it up. In fact, the more disdainful the lady might be the better it was, for then the poet could write the more pa.s.sionate verses. For all this love and service was make-believe. It was merely a fas.h.i.+on and not meant to be taken seriously. A man might have a wife whom he loved dearly, and yet write poems in honor of another lady without thought of wrong. The sonnet, having something very artificial in it, just suited this make-believe love.

Petrarch, the great Italian poet, from whom you remember Chaucer had learned much, and whom perhaps he had once met, made use of this kind of poem. In his sonnets he told his love of a fair lady, Laura, and made her famous for all time.

Of course, when Wyatt came to Italy Petrarch had long been dead.

But his poems were as living as in the days of Chaucer, and it was from Petrarch's works that Wyatt learned this new kind of poem, and it was he who first made use of it in English. He, too, like Petrarch, addressed his sonnets to a lady, and the lady he took for his love was Queen Anne Boleyn. As he is the first, he is perhaps one of the roughest of our sonnet writers, but into his sonnets he wrought something of manly strength. He does not sigh so much as other poets of the age. He says, in fact, "If I serve my lady faithfully I deserve reward." Here is one of his sonnets, which he calls "The lover compareth his state to a s.h.i.+p in perilous storm tossed by the sea."

"My galley charged with forgetfulness, Through sharpe seas in winter's night doth pa.s.s, 'Tween rock and rock; and eke my foe (alas) That is my lord, steereth with cruelness: And every oar a thought in readiness, As though that death were light in such a case.

An endless wind doth tear the sail apace, Of forced sighs and trusty fearfulness; A rain of tears, a cloud of dark disdain, Have done the wearied cords great hinderance: Wreathed with error and with ignorance; The stars be his, that lead me to this pain; Drowned is reason that should me comfort, And I remain, despairing of the port."

It is not perfect, it is not even Wyatt's best sonnet, but it is one of the most simple. To make it run smoothly we must sound the ed in those words ending in ed as a separate syllable, and we must put a final e to sharp in the second line and sound that.

Then you see the rimes are not very good. To begin with, the first eight all have sounds of s. Then "alas" and "pa.s.s" do not rime with "case" and "apace," nor do "comfort" and "port." I point these things out, so that later on you may see for yourselves how much more polished and elegant a thing the sonnet becomes.

Although Wyatt was our first sonnet writer, some of his poems which are not sonnets are much more musical, especially some he wrote for music. Perhaps best of all you will like his satire Of the mean and sure estate. A satire is a poem which holds up to scorn and ridicule wickedness, folly, or stupidity. It is the sword of literature, and often its edge was keen, its point sharp.

"My mother's maids when they do sew and spin, They sing a song made of the fieldish mouse; That for because her livelod* was but thin Would needs go see her townish sister's house.

*Livelihood.

'My sister,' quoth she, 'hath a living good, And hence from me she dwelleth not a mile, In cold and storm she lieth warm and dry In bed of down. The dirt doth not defile Her tender foot; she labours not as I.

Richly she feeds, and at the rich man's cost; And for her meat she need not crave nor cry.

By sea, by land, of delicates* the most, Her caterer seeks, and spareth for no peril.

She feeds on boil meat, bake meat and roast, And hath, therefore, no whit of charge or travail.'

*Delicacies.

So forth she goes, trusting of all this wealth With her sister her part so for to shape, That if she might there keep herself in health, To live a Lady, while her life do last.

And to the door now is she come by stealth, And with her foot anon she sc.r.a.pes full fast.

Th' other for fear durst not well scarce appear, Of every noise so was the wretch aghast.

At last she asked softly who was there; And in her language as well as she could, 'Peep,' quoth the other, 'sister, I am here.'

'Peace,' quoth the town mouse, 'why speaketh thou so loud?'

But by the hand she took her fair and well.

'Welcome,' quoth she, 'my sister by the Rood.'

She feasted her that joy it was to tell The fare they had, they drank the wine so clear; And as to purpose now and then it fell, So cheered her with, 'How, sister, what cheer.'

Amid this joy befell a sorry chance, That welladay, the stranger bought full dear The fare she had. For as she looked ascance, Under a stool she spied two flaming eyes, In a round head, with sharp ears. In France Was never mouse so feared, for the unwise Had not ere seen such beast before.

Yet had nature taught her after her guise To know her foe, and dread him evermore.

The town mouse fled, she knew whither to go; The other had no s.h.i.+ft, but wonders sore, Fear'd of her life! At home she wished her tho'; And to the door, alas! as she did skip (The heaven it would, lo, and eke her chance was so) At the threshold her sill foot did trip; And ere she might recover it again, The traitor Cat had caught her by the hip And made her there against her will remain, That had forgot her poor surety and rest, For seeming wealth, wherein she thought to reign."

That is not the end of the poem. Wyatt points the moral.

"Alas," he says, "how men do seek the best and find the worst."

"Although thy head were hooped with gold," thou canst not rid thyself of care. Content thyself, then, with what is allotted thee and use it well.

This satire Wyatt wrote while living quietly in the country, having barely escaped with his life from the King's wrath. But although he escaped the scaffold, he died soon after in his King's service. Riding on the King's business in the autumn of 1542 he became overheated, fell into a fever, and died. He was buried at Sherborne. No stone marks his resting-place, but his friend and fellow-poet, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, wrote a n.o.ble elegy:--

"A hea, where Wisdom mysteries did frame; Whose hammers beat still, in that lively brain, As on a st.i.thy* where that some work of fame Was daily wrought, to turn to Britain's gain.

*Anvil.

A hand, that taught what might be said in rhyme, That Chaucer reft the glory of his wit.

A mark, the which (unperfected for time) Some may approach; but never none shall hit!"

BOOKS TO READ

Early Sixteenth-Century Lyrics (Belle Lettres Series), edited by F. M. Padelford (original spelling).

Chapter XL THE BEGINNING OF BLANK VERSE

THE poet with whose verses the last chapter ended was named Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. The son of a n.o.ble and ancient house, Surrey lived a gay life in court and camp. Proud, hot-headed, quick-tempered, he was often in trouble, more than once in prison. In youth he was called "the most foolish proud boy in England," and at the age of thirty, still young and gay and full of life, he died upon the scaffold. Accused of treason, yet innocent, he fell a victim to "the wrath of princes," the wrath of that hot-headed King Henry VIII. Surrey lived at the same time as Wyatt and, although he was fourteen years younger, was his friend. Together they are the forerunners of our modern poetry. They are nearly always spoken of together--Wyatt and Surrey--Surrey and Wyatt. Like Wyatt, Surrey followed the Italian poets. Like Wyatt he wrote sonnets; but whereas Wyatt's are rough, Surrey's are smooth and musical, although he does not keep the rules about rime endings. One who wrote not long after the time of Wyatt and Surrey says of them, "Sir Thomas Wyatt, the elder, and Henry, Earl of Surrey, were the two chieftains, who, having travelled in Italy, and there tasted the sweet and stately measures and style of the Italian poesie . . . greatly polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesie from that it had been before, and for that cause may justly be said the first reformers of our English metre and syle. . . . I repute them for the two chief lanterns of light to all others that have since employed their pens on English poesie."*

*G. Puttenham, Art of English Poesie.

A later writer* has called Surrey the "first refiner" of our language. And just as there comes a time in our own lives when we begin to care not only for the story, but for the words in which a story is told and for the way in which those words are used, so, too, there comes such a time in the life of a nation, and this time for England we may perhaps date from Wyatt and Surrey.

Before then there were men who tried to use the best words in the best way, but they did it unknowingly, as birds might sing. The language, too, in which they wrote was still a growing thing.

When Surrey wrote it had nearly reached its finished state, and he helped to finish and polish it.

*W. J. Courthope.

As the fas.h.i.+on was, Surrey chose a lady to whom to address his verses. She was the little Lady Elizabeth Fitz-Gerald, whose father had died a broken-hearted prisoner in the Tower. She was only ten when Surrey made her famous in song, under the name of Geraldine. Here is a sonnet in which he, seeing the joy of all nature at the coming of Spring, mourns that his lady is still unkind:

"The sweet season, that bud and bloom forth brings, With green hath clad the hill, and eke the vale, The nightingale with feathers new she sings: The turtle to her mate hath told her tale.

Summer is come, for every spray now springs, The hart hath hung his old head on the pale, The buck in haste his winter coat he flings; The fishes float with new repaired scale, The adder all her slough away she lings; The swift swallow pursueth the flies small; The busy-bee her honey now she mings;*

Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale.

And thus I see among these pleasant things Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs."

*Mingles.

Besides following Wyatt in making the sonnet known to English readers, Surrey was the first to write in blank verse, that is in long ten-syllabled lines which do not rime. This is a kind of poetry in which some of the grandest poems in our language are written, and we should remember Surrey as the first maker of it.

For with very little change the rules which Surrey laid down have been followed by our best poets ever since, so from the sixteenth century till now there has been far less change in our poetry than in the five centuries before. You can see this for yourself if you compare Surrey's poetry with Layamon's or Langland's, and then with some of the blank verse near the end of this book.

It was in translating part of Virgil's Aeneid that Surrey used blank verse. Virgil was an ancient Roman poet, born 70 B. C., who in his book called the Aeneid told of the wanderings and adventures of Aeneas, and part of this poem Surrey translated into English.

This is how he tells of the way in which Aeneas saved his old father by carrying him on his shoulders out of the burning town of Troy when "The crackling flame was heard throughout the walls, and more and more the burning heat drew near."

"My shoulders broad, And layed neck with garments 'gan I spread, And thereon cast a yellow lion's skin; And thereupon my burden I receive.

Young Iulus clasped in my right hand, Followeth me fast, with unequal pace, And at my back my wife. Thus did we pa.s.s By places shadowed most with the night, And me, whom late the dart which enemies threw, Nor press of Argive routs could make amaz'd, Each whisp'ring wind hath power now to fray, And every sound to move my doubtful mind.

So much I dread my burden and my fere.*

And now we 'gan draw near unto the gate, Right well escap'd the danger, as me thought, When that at hand a sound of feet we heard.

My father then, gazing throughout the dark, Cried on me, 'Flee, son! they are at hand.'

With that, bright s.h.i.+elds, and shene** armours I saw But then, I know not what unfriendly G.o.d My troubled with from me bereft for fear.