Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, Mindless of its just honours; with this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound; A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound; With it Camöens soothed an exile's grief; The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp, It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land To struggle through dark ways, and, when a damp Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand The thing became a trumpet; whence he blew Soul-animating strains -- alas, too few!
2 thoughts on ““Scorn not the Sonnet” by William Wordsworth [w/ Audio]”
I’ve always admired this sonnet. But I also think Wordsworth was way too flexible with his rhyme schemes. I especially dislike the octave that rhymes abbaacca — because the whole point of the inherited Petrarchan octave (abbaabba) is to have a mirror quatrain rhyming baab right in the middle. Milton would never have done anything like what Wordsworth did. He would have been embarrassed.
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I’ve always admired this sonnet. But I also think Wordsworth was way too flexible with his rhyme schemes. I especially dislike the octave that rhymes abbaacca — because the whole point of the inherited Petrarchan octave (abbaabba) is to have a mirror quatrain rhyming baab right in the middle. Milton would never have done anything like what Wordsworth did. He would have been embarrassed.
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I noticed this one starts Petrarchan and veers Shakespearean. I wondered if that was to make a point, or it just worked out that way.
I don’t really hear the rhymes with the enjambments, cesura, etc. but I don’t mind.
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