John Addington Symonds (1840-1893)

The Sonnet (III)

 
 
 

The Sonnet is a world, where feelings caught

a 
Index

by author

by title

by first line

by rhyme scheme

Reference view
Petrarchan (8 6)
Elizabethan (4 4 4 2)
Rhyme plot (SVG)
Source code
 

In webs of phantasy, combine and fuse

b 
 

Their kindred elements 'neath mystic dews

b 
 

Shed from the ether round man's dwelling wrought;

a 
 5

Distilling heart's content, star-fragrance fraught

a 
 

With influences from the breathing fires

c 
 

Of heaven in everlasting endless gyres

c 
 

Ending and encircling orbs of thought.

a 
 

Our Sonnet's world hath two fix'd hemispheres:

d 
 10

This, where the sun with fierce strength masculine

e 
 

Pours his keen rays and bids the noonday shine;

e 
 

That, where the moon and the stars, concordant powers,

f 
 

Shed milder rays, and daylight disappears

d 
 

In low melodious music of still hours.

f 
 
 

Found this one on http://www.sonnets.org.

Remarks:

This is Late High Victorian. Note the half-rhyme between “disappears” and “hours” in the couplet, and the hybrid form. Rhymes are tight, but not quite so tight as strict Petrarchan; quatrains are strong. The sestet runs an unconventional a-b-b-c-a-c, yet concludes with that half-rhyme. The theme, while dutifully taking up the tradition of reflecting on the sonnet form, is both reminiscent of Metaphysical conceits, and Victorian Science (spelled with capital “S”). “Everlasting endless gyres” brings Yeats to mind, but Symonds (though of Yeats's generation) wrote earlier than A Vision.

 

Presented by the SonneteerWendell Piez, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2016