Spenser's Sonnet No. 75

Edmund Spenser - Spenser was born in London in 1552. Sir Philip Sidney was his friend and patron. Sidney introduced him to Queen Elizabeth. When Sidney died, Spenser wrote an elegy in his memory and honour, titled, "Astrophel". Spenser is also famous for The Shepherd's Calendar, The Faerie Queene, Amoretti, Epithalamion, etc. Amoretti is a sonnet sequence consisting of 88 (or 89) sonnets. They were composed to celebrate his love for Elizabeth Boyle whom Spenser married in 1594. However, many modern critics believe that some sonnets are addressed to Lady Carey or to an idealized or fictionalized woman. Spenser dwelt in the Kilcolman castle in Ireland. But in 1598 Tyrone's rebellion broke out. The castle was set on fire, and Spenser escaped. He died in the next year of extreme poverty and starvation.

Origin and Types of Sonnets - 

Petrarchan Sonnet - The sonnet originated in Italy in the thirteenth century. Giacomo da Lentini, a thirteenth century Sicilian poet of Italy, was credited with the invention of sonnet. Though he wrote in original Sicilian language, his poems survive in Tuscan. His poetry was an adaptation to Italian of the Provençal poetry of the troubadours, concerning courtly, chivalric love. Dante (1265-1321) wrote a number of sonnets to his ladylove, Beatrice. But it was Petrarch (1304-74) who brought it to perfection by writing sonnets idealizing his love for Laura. Petrarch's sonnet form became well-known, especially in France by Ronsard (1524-85) and Du Bellay (1522-60). The Petrarchan sonnet, which is also called Italian sonnet, is composed of an octave and a sestet. An octave is a passage of eight lines and sestet of six lines. In the Petrarchan sonnet, the octave rhymes thus - ABBA ABBA. The sestet rhymes - CD CD CD, or CDE CDE. 

English or Shakespearean Sonnet - However, in England, the sonnet form was introduced by Thomas Wyatt and his student, Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey. Wyatt followed the Petrarchan model, which was further obeyed by John Milton. Milton's "On His Blindness" is a famous Petrarchan sonnet. But Henry Howard experimented with the form and split it into three quatrains and a concluding couplet. It is called English sonnet or Shakespearean sonnet, as it was William Shakespeare who made this structure of sonnet prominent. The rhyme scheme of Shakespearean sonnet is: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. 

Spenserian Sonnet - Edmund Spenser, later, brought certain flexibilities and changes into this structure. He transformed the rhyme scheme into thus: ABAB BCBC CDCD EE. This is called Spenserian Sonnet. 

Curtal Sonnet - There is also another type of sonnet called Curtal Sonnet. It was invented by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It consists of eleven (or ten and half) lines. Here sestet is used first part and then a quatrain and a half line is implemented. 

 

Lady Lazarus

BY SYLVIA PLATH

I have done it again.   

One year in every ten   

I manage it——

A sort of walking miracle, my skin   

Bright as a Nazi lampshade,   

My right foot

A paperweight,

My face a featureless, fine   

Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin   

O my enemy.   

Do I terrify?——

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?   

The sour breath

Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh

The grave cave ate will be   

At home on me

And I a smiling woman.   

I am only thirty.

And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.   

What a trash

To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.   

The peanut-crunching crowd   

Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot——

The big strip tease.   

Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands   

My knees.

I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.   

The first time it happened I was ten.   

It was an accident.

The second time I meant

To last it out and not come back at all.   

I rocked shut

As a seashell.

They had to call and call

And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying

Is an art, like everything else.   

I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.   

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.

It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.   

It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day

To the same place, the same face, the same brute   

Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’

That knocks me out.   

There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge   

For the hearing of my heart——

It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge   

For a word or a touch   

Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.   

So, so, Herr Doktor.   

So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,

I am your valuable,   

The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.   

I turn and burn.

Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—

You poke and stir.

Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——

A cake of soap,   

A wedding ring,   

A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer   

Beware

Beware.

Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair   

And I eat men like air.

Daddy

BY SYLVIA PLATH

You do not do, you do not do   

Any more, black shoe

In which I have lived like a foot   

For thirty years, poor and white,   

Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.   

You died before I had time——

Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,   

Ghastly statue with one gray toe   

Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic   

Where it pours bean green over blue   

In the waters off beautiful Nauset.   

I used to pray to recover you.

Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town   

Scraped flat by the roller

Of wars, wars, wars.

But the name of the town is common.   

My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.   

So I never could tell where you   

Put your foot, your root,

I never could talk to you.

The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.   

Ich, ich, ich, ich,

I could hardly speak.

I thought every German was you.   

And the language obscene

An engine, an engine

Chuffing me off like a Jew.

A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.   

I began to talk like a Jew.

I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna   

Are not very pure or true.

With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck   

And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack

I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,

With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.   

And your neat mustache

And your Aryan eye, bright blue.

Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——

Not God but a swastika

So black no sky could squeak through.   

Every woman adores a Fascist,   

The boot in the face, the brute   

Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,   

In the picture I have of you,

A cleft in your chin instead of your foot   

But no less a devil for that, no not   

Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.

I was ten when they buried you.   

At twenty I tried to die

And get back, back, back to you.

I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,   

And they stuck me together with glue.   

And then I knew what to do.

I made a model of you,

A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.   

And I said I do, I do.

So daddy, I’m finally through.

The black telephone’s off at the root,   

The voices just can’t worm through.

If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——

The vampire who said he was you   

And drank my blood for a year,

Seven years, if you want to know.

Daddy, you can lie back now.

There’s a stake in your fat black heart   

And the villagers never liked you.

They are dancing and stamping on you.   

They always knew it was you.

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.

 

Miniver Cheevy

BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,

   Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;

He wept that he was ever born,

   And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old

   When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;

The vision of a warrior bold

   Would set him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not,

   And dreamed, and rested from his labors;

He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,

   And Priam’s neighbors.

Miniver mourned the ripe renown

   That made so many a name so fragrant;

He mourned Romance, now on the town,

   And Art, a vagrant.

Miniver loved the Medici,

   Albeit he had never seen one;

He would have sinned incessantly

   Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace

   And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;

He missed the mediæval grace

   Of iron clothing.

Miniver scorned the gold he sought,

   But sore annoyed was he without it;

Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,

   And thought about it.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,

   Scratched his head and kept on thinking;

Miniver coughed, and called it fate,

   And kept on drinking.

Richard Cory

BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

A Red, Red Rose

BY ROBERT BURNS

O my Luve is like a red, red rose 

   That’s newly sprung in June; 

O my Luve is like the melody 

   That’s sweetly played in tune. 

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass, 

   So deep in luve am I; 

And I will luve thee still, my dear, 

   Till a’ the seas gang dry. 

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, 

   And the rocks melt wi’ the sun; 

I will love thee still, my dear, 

   While the sands o’ life shall run. 

And fare thee weel, my only luve! 

   And fare thee weel awhile! 

And I will come again, my luve, 

   Though it were ten thousand mile.

Bleecker Street, Summer

BY DEREK WALCOTT

Summer for prose and lemons, for nakedness and languor,

for the eternal idleness of the imagined return,

for rare flutes and bare feet, and the August bedroom

of tangled sheets and the Sunday salt, ah violin!

When I press summer dusks together, it is

a month of street accordions and sprinklers

laying the dust, small shadows running from me.

It is music opening and closing, Italia mia, on Bleecker,

ciao, Antonio, and the water-cries of children

tearing the rose-coloured sky in streams of paper;

it is dusk in the nostrils and the smell of water

down littered streets that lead you to no water,

and gathering islands and lemons in the mind.

There is the Hudson, like the sea aflame.

I would undress you in the summer heat,

and laugh and dry your damp flesh if you came.