The Sonnet

by

Frank X. Roberts

Like William Wordsworth, I find in “sundry moods,” that it is an enjoyable “pastime to be bound/within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground . . .” and “find brief solace there.” The following very short history of the sonnet form, and the sonnet after it, attempt to suggest that here at the start of the 21st century there is more than ever a need to spend more time reading the poetry of the past. I hope readers find some agreement with my general view and that my potted history of the sonnet will motivate some to read or re-read sonnets from the past.

The sonnet has a long history, going back to before the Renaissance. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines the sonnet as: “A piece of verse (properly expressive of one main idea) consisting of fourteen decasyllabic lines, with rimes (sic) arranged according to one or other of certain definite schemes.” The sonnet is a disciplined poetic form which forces the writer to stay within fourteen lines to express a given idea, and to limit each line to ten syllables (although this can vary). Through the centuries poets have been more or less successful in staying within these parameters but along the way many variations have been used in both rhyme scheme and structure.
 
One of the earliest sonnet forms was the “Italian Sonnet,” also called the “Petrarchan,” used by the Italian poet, Francesco Petrarch (1302-1374) in his famous sonnets to Laura. The Italian Sonnet’s rhyme scheme followed the pattern: abba; abba; efg; efg (or variously:  fef; efe or ef; ef; ef).
 
When the sonnet was introduced into England by Wyatt and Surrey early in the 16th century, it used a rhyme scheme which varied from the “Italian” form in the following way: abab; cdcd; efef; gg.  This “English” sonnet with its final rhyming couplet (gg) also became known as the “Shakespearean Sonnet,” used by William Shakespeare in his masterly sonnet sequence.
 
John Milton saved the sonnet from going into complete eclipse during the 17th century, but it was not until the late 18th and early 19th centuries that many sonnets were again produced by poets of the Romantic school such as Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats. Even then, William Wordsworth felt it necessary to begin one of his sonnets with the words, “Scorn not the Sonnet, Critic . . .” indicating the low ebb to which interest in the sonnet form had fallen.
 
In the later 19th century and into the 20th century more poets began to write in, and to experiment with, the sonnet form. Perhaps the best known sonnet sequence of the Victorian period is Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese, with one of its sonnets having the now familiar opening line, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” Other poets who have used the sonnet form over the past 150 years, changing it to suit their poetic theories and their subject content, are: George Meredith, Robert Bridges, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Rupert Brooke, and nearer to our time, Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and W. H. Auden, as well as a number of lesser known poets.
 
The Old Poets
(A sonnet)
 
The old poets had a way of saying it,
No hedging the reality, their periphrases
Never preventing the strong true line. See:
“Fair stood the wind for France.” Or maybe this:
 
“I'll make a ghost of him that lets me.”
(No apologies to ignorance in the pit.)
They had language fixt firmly on the bench,
And what is more the sharp tools to work it.
 
Who among us now could write, and not blench:
“O frowning fortune, cursed fickle dame.”
Though saviors rarer than radium,
Immortal diamonds, hyacinth girls, show wit,
They are no match for the Shephearde’s brighte songe,
Ever the glory of the English tongue.

Frank is a semi-regular contributor to BiblioBuffet. His extensive career in teaching and librarianship began when he taught English in the U.S. From 1961 to 1963, as part of a Columbia University program called “Teachers for East Africa,” he taught English and American Literature in East Africa. There he met his wife, Dorothy. They returned to the U.S. where he simultaneously taught and finished two Masters’ degrees, in Education and in Librarianship. In 1968 they returned to England where Frank taught Library Studies, and adopted Hodge, a cat who later traveled around the world with them. In 1972, Frank was “seconded” for two years to teach at Makerere University in Uganda, East Africa, but left reluctantly after one year when the tyranny of Idi Amin became intolerable. From there it was back to England, then Australia and finally  to America in 1979, to Buffalo where Frank earned his doctorate. Later they moved to Colorado, where he was Professor of Library Studies at the University of Northern Colorado until retiring in 1997. Frank published James A. Michener: A Checklist of his Work with a Selected Annotated Bibliography (Greenwood Press) in 1995. He has written on bookmarks, specifically on medieval bookmarks, his special area of interest. A poet by avocation, he writes eclectically but traditionally. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it