PREFACE

THE aim of this work is to provide students and lovers of good poetry with a comprehensive Selection of the best original Sonnets known to the Editor, written by native English poets not living; and to illustrate it from English poetical and prose literature.

In pursuance of the plan adopted, the volume falls into two equal portions,-Text and Notes. The first is devoted to Sonnets by those writers who have attained the highest, or nearly the highest, excellence in this species of composition; and the second, which is specially intended for students, to a liberal system of illustration, furnishing a complete critical apparatus for the study of the Sonnets in the Text, and containing numerous supplementary Sonnets by the same writers and others of the past suggested by them. Throughout this portion also have been interspersed, as occasion offered, examples from some of our best living sonnet-writers; but it will be obvious that these, which come in simply by the way, and form no essential part of the work, are not submitted as affording any adequate representation of our contemporary Sonnet-literature.

Definitions of the Sonnet have been so frequent since the present work was first taken in hand, now some years ago, as to determine the Editor not to encumber his volume with the

analytical Essay on the Sonnet out of which it originally grew. It may be mentioned, however, that the Selection, generally, has been made in accordance with principles enforced in that Essay, which-with all deference to such rigid disciplinarians as Mr. Tomlinson-favoured a relaxation, so far as English practice is concerned, of nearly every law in the Italian code except the two cardinal ones which demand that the Sonnet shall consist of fourteen rimed decasyllabic verses, and be a development of one idea, mood, feeling, or sentiment,—and one only.

By reducing the contents of the Text to the orthography of the present day-a wholesome test of poetic vitality—and adhering, in all quotations in the Notes, to the successive contemporary modes of spelling and (when admissible) punctuation, the Editor trusts that he has avoided offence to the advocates either of the archaic method on the one hand, or of the modern on the other.

To the respective owners by whose liberality so large a number of copyright Sonnets are inserted; and to the many good friends who by word or deed have aided him in his labour of love, the Editor takes this opportunity of repeating his grateful acknowledgments.

D. M. M.

DOUNE, PERthshire,

27th November, 1879.

AREWELL, Love, and all thy laws forever!

FA

Thy baited hooks shall tangle me no more:
Senec and Plato call me from thy lore

To perfect wealth my wit for to endeavour.
In blind error when I did perséver,
Thy sharp repulse, that pricketh aye so sore,
Taught me in trifles that I set no store;

But 'scaped forth thence, since, liberty is lever.
Therefore, farewell! go trouble younger hearts,
And in me claim no more authority:
With idle youth go use thy property,

And thereon spend thy many brittle darts;

For hitherto though I have lost my time,

Me list no longer rotten boughs to climb.

SIR THO. WYAT

1503-1542

SIR THO. WYAT

1503-1542

II

The deserted loVER CONSOLETH HIMSELF

WITH REMEMBRANCE THAT ALL WOMEN ARE BY

NATURE FICKLE.

DIVERS doth use, as I have heard and know,

When that to change their ladies do begin,
To mourn, and wail, and never for to lynn;
Hoping thereby to 'pease their painful woe.
And some there be that when it chanceth so
That women change, and hate where love hath been,
They call them false, and think with words to win.
The hearts of them which otherwhere doth grow.
But as for me, though that by chance indeed
Change hath outworn the favour that I had,
I will not wail, lament, nor yet be sad,
Nor call her false that falsely did me feed;
But let it pass, and think it is of kind

That often change doth please a woman's mind.

EARL OF SURREY

1516?-1547

III

DESCRIPTION OF SPRING,

WHEREIN EACH THING RENEWS, SAVE ONLY THE LOVER.

HE soote season, that bud and bloom furth brings,

THE

With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale,
The nightingale with feathers new she sings;
The turtle to her make hath told her tale.
Summer is come, for every spray now springs,
The hart hath hung his old head on the pale;
The buck in brake his winter coat he flings;
The fishes flete with new-repairèd scale;
The adder all her slough away she slings;
The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale;
The busy bee her honey now she mings;
Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale.
And thus I see among these pleasant things
Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs.

SET

IV

VOW TO LOVE FAITHFULLY,

HOWSOEVER HE BE REWARDED.

ET me whereas the sun doth parch the green,
Or where his beams do not dissolve the ice;
In temperate heat, where he is felt and seen;
In presence prest of people mad or wise;
Set me in high, or yet in low degree;
In longest night, or in the shortest day;
In clearest sky, or where clouds thickest be;
In lusty youth, or when my hairs are gray :
Set me in heaven, in earth, or else in hell,
In hill, or dale, or in the foaming flood;
Thrall, or at large, alive whereso I dwell,
Sick, or in health, in evil fame, or good,
Hers will I be; and only with this thought.
Content myself, although my chance be nought.

EARL OF SURREY

15162-1547

V

PRAISE OF CERTAIN PSALMS OF DAVID

TRANSLATED BY SIR T. W. THe elder.

THE great Macedon that out of Persia chased
Darius, of whose huge power all Asia rung,
In the rich ark Dan Homer's rimes he placed,
Who feigned gests of heathen princes sung.
What holy grave, what worthy sepulture,

To Wyat's Psalms should Christians then purchase?
Where he doth paint the lively faith and pure,
The steadfast hope, the sweet return to grace
Of just David, by perfect penitence;
Where rulers may see in a mirror clear
The bitter fruit of false concupiscence;
How Jewry bought Uriah's death full dear.
In princes' hearts God's scourge imprinted deep,
Ought them awake out of their sinful sleep.