AS some old, rare and mellowed instrument That master hands, dust long ago, have played, So is the sonnet: I am half afraid My very touch may seem irreverent; Or, as some ancient jar keeps redolent With dust of roses that bloomed but to fade, So is the sonnet's sweetness poignant made With dust of great ones who before us went. In it old Petrarch made his lover's moan; Will Shakespeare made a form of it his own; Blind Milton, Wordsworth and the lyric Keats Are of the dead that live still in its beats. When to a sonnet I put humble pen, I summon back the great to earth again. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...FESTE'S SONG (1), FR. TWELFTH NIGHT by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE WOO NOT THE WORLD by MUHAMMAD AL-MU'TAMID II A NAMELESS EPITAPH (2) by MATTHEW ARNOLD WHERE ARE THE WARRING BRAVE? by JOSIE CRAIG BERRY CAELIA: SONNETS: 12 by WILLIAM BROWNE (1591-1643) IN THE HIGH HILLS by MAXWELL STRUTHERS BURT AN ANSWER TO CHESTERFIELD'S 'REBUS' by JOHN BYROM |