TO THE LORD GENERAL CROMWELL.

CROMWELL, our chief of men, who through a cloud
Not of war only, but detractions rude,

Guided by faith and matchless fortitude,

To peace and truth thy glorious way hath plowed,
And on the neck of crownèd fortune proud

Hast reared God's trophies, and his work pursued, While Darwen stream, with blood of Scots imbrued, And Dunbar field resounds thy praises loud,

To

And Worcester's laureate wreath: yet much remains
conquer still;
Peace hath her victories
No less renowned than War: new foes arise,
Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains :

Help us to save free conscience from the paw
Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw.

It has been seen that Milton felt free to make a slight change in the grammatical structure of the sonnet, though not to any extent in its form or nature. Meanwhile lesser poets were more daring. Although it seems like belittling the subject to refer to obsolete "varieties of the sonnet, we follow Leigh Hunt in enumerating the following: 1st, the twelve-syllabled Italian versi sdruccioli, or "sliding verses," terminating in dactyls, and styled Duodenary Sonnets; Mute Sonnets, that have one-syllable rhymes; Continuous or Iterating Sonnets, arranged on one rhyme, or with each line beginning and ending with the same word; Two-rhymed Sonnets, of which Scott, Gosse, Lord Hanmer, and other English writers have produced examples, also Edgar Fawcett; Answering Sonnets, written in reply to others on the same rhymes, but with different meanings; Retrograde Sonnets,

reading alike forwards or backwards; Chained or Linked Sonnets, each verse beginning with the last word of the preceding; Interwoven Sonnets, with the rhymes repeated in the body of the lines, (see Mr. Morse's " Immortality "); Crowning Sonnets, arranged in a series as a panegyric; Caudated or Tailed Sonnets, having a number of extra lines, and which naturally degenerated into the Comic Sonnet. Leigh Hunt observes that "many of these are puerilities." Perhaps one must recognize them, because Milton's "On the New Forces of Conscience is "tailed" or "comic" sonnet. Indeed, Petrarch, Dante, and Tasso are open to the charge of occasionally dallying with such whimsicalities of rhyme. But the consideration of such excrescences is foreign to our purpose, and indeed they are of a short-lived and trivial nature. To see Drollery in the mask of the sonnet seems sacrilege in fact.

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The sonnet now goes into retirement for a hundred years, and Dryden and the French school have the field with the restoration of Charles II. Thomas Gray writes an indifferent sonnet on his friend West. Pope sneers at sonnets and "hackney sonneteers." Dryden disdains them, but Mason and Warton keep the form alive. Johnson is, however, tired of sonnets (and who would not tire of poor ones!), and so he derides Warton's

muse as

Tricked in antique ruff and bonnet,
Ode and elegy and sonnet.

Nevertheless Cowper, dying in the last year of the eighteenth century, writes a creditable sonnet "To Mary Unwin," and gives prelude of the me

lodious nineteenth, the halcyon period of all sonnet history, lighted by the names of Wordsworth, Keats, and Mrs. Browning.

The chorus is led up to by Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges (1762-1837) and William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850), who write entertaining sonnets, the former's "Echo " and the latter's "Landscape and "Hope" being excellent examples. Coleridge's sonnets (1772-1834) must attract all sonnet lovers. There is such force and pathos in "Kosciusko," especially in the last line, and such dreamy music in the seaside "Fancy,” reminding of Keats, that both are quoted, though one is ir regular and one "illegitimate."

ON THE LAST FAILURE OF KOSCIUSKO.

OH, what a loud and fearful shriek was there,
As though a thousand souls one death-groan poured!
Ah me! they saw beneath a hireling's sword
Their Kosciusko fall! Through the swart air
(As pauses the tired Cossack's barbarous yell
Of triumph) on the chill and midnight gale
Rises with frantic burst, or sadder swell,

The dirge of murdered Hope! while Freedom pale Bends in such anguish o'er her destined bier,

As if from eldest time some Spirit meek

Had gathered in a mystic urn each tear
That ever on a patriot's furrowed cheek

Fit channel found; and she had drained the bowl
In the mere willfulness and sick despair of soul !

FANCY IN NUBIBUS.

(Composed by the seaside, October, 1817.)

OH, it is pleasant, with a heart at ease,
Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies,
To make the shifting clouds be what you please,
Or let the easily persuaded eyes

Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould
Of a friend's fancy; or with head bent low,
And cheek aslant, see rivers flow of gold

"Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveler, go
From mount to mount, through Cloudland, gorgeous land!
Or listening to the tide, with closèd sight,
Be that blind bard, who on the Chian strand

By those deep sounds possessed, with inward light Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey

Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

When we come to consider the other great "Lake poet," Wordsworth (1770-1850), we count one of the rarest (if not the very rarest), beads on the sonnet rosary of poets' names. Since he was a writer of sonnets by hundreds, one could not expect them all to be even of second-rate quality; but the pure, clear beauty of his best ones would atone for vapidity in thousands! Nor are his fine sonnets few, and it is pleasant to find his best worthily set in the Petrarcan mould. In letting the sonnet tell its history and triumphs, it would be a pleasure to insert many of Wordsworth's, such as the picturing of sleep “A Flock of Sheep that leisurely pass by;" or the beautiful tribute to girlhood in "It is a Beauteous Evening, calm and free;" "A Volant Tribe of Bards," the sonnet on Westminster Bridge, and

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many others. But as a sufficient stumbling-block to all scorners of the sonnet" the following are selected as being adequate examples of Wordsworth's varied power, and as noble signs of the sonnet's scope. Where can they be matched by one author, and where in such brief space can be found so many jewel-like, memorable lines? Well has Emerson called Wordsworth's sonnets "the witchery of language":

THE QUIET MUSE.

NOT Love, not War, nor the tumultuous swell
Of civil conflict, nor the wrecks of change,
Nor Duty struggling with afflictions strange,
Not these alone inspire the tuneful shell;
But where untroubled peace and concord dwell,
There also is the Muse not loath to range,
Watching the twilight smoke of cot or grange
Skyward ascending from a woody dell.

Meek aspirations please her, lone endeavor,
And sage content, and placid melancholy;
She loves to gaze upon a crystal river,

Diaphanous, because it travels slowly.
Soft is the music that would charm forever;

The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly.

The classic building of the following sonnet would have pleased its subject. The qualities of balance, symmetry, acceleration of interest, reserve force, and climax, are all notable :

MILTON.

MILTON! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,