I Within the sonnet's glittering limit lies The diamond's royal fire, Wordsworthian verse Wedding high thought with noble music, terse With wisdom; there the opalescent dyes Of love-light from a Petrarch's brimming eyes; The luted plaint that chastened Dante's curse; Miltonic echoes organ pealed, the nurse Of solemn sounds brought down from midnight skies. It measures with the royal tread of kings, And treasures wealth too precious to be hid In wanton rhymes and idly footed lines; Or upward soaring, as an eagle, wings Its way to empyrean calms amid The tuneful silence of the topmost Apennines. II They say the sonnet is a narrow pale, A little garden straitly hedged around Where only slender flowerets may be found, But no brave blossom lusty with the gale And the untempered sun; and in its bound Pale poets gently pipe in plaintive sound The sifted sweetness of love's distant bale On reeds all murmurous of the underground. Yet trumpet tongues have found swift utterance here And freedom loosed her fiery-hearted levin, And earth has trembled with the solemn fear Of harmonies breathed from the stooping heaven E'en in this slender compass closely pent A master's voice may shake the firmament! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MUSIC by STEPHEN VINCENT BENET TO A DEAD LOVER by LOUISE BOGAN CAPPER KAPLINSKI AT THE NORTH SIDE CUE CLUB by HAYDEN CARRUTH PEACE (2) by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON TO MARY CHURCH TERRELL - LECTURER by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON |