Sonnets and Canzonets

by Amos Bronson Alcott

“Thou art like that which is most sweet and fair, A gentle morning in the youth of spring, When the few early birds begin to sing Within the delicate depths of the fine air. Yet shouldst thou these dear beauties much impair, Since thou art better than is everything Which or the woods or skies or green fields bring, And finer thoughts hast thou than they can wear. In the proud sweetness of thy grace I see What lies within,—a pure and steadfast mind, Which its own mistress is of sanctity, And to all gentleness hath been refined. So that thy least breath falleth upon me As the soft breathing of midsummer wind.”

In the changes of time and the fitful mood of the poet, sadness succeeds to this assured joy, and he sings,—

“The day has past, I never may return; Twelve circling years have run since first I came And kindled the pure truth of friendship’s flame; Alone remain these ashes in the urn— Vainly for light the taper may I turn,— Thy hand is closed, as for these years, the same, And for the substance naught is but the name. No more a hope, no more a ray to burn. But once more in the pauses of thy joy, Remember him who sought thee in his youth, And with the old reliance of the boy Asked for thy treasures in the guise of truth.”

Here is another voice, chanting in another strain,—

“Thy beauty fades, and with it, too, my love, For ’twas the selfsame stalk that bore the flower; Soft fell the rain, and, breaking from above, The sun looked out upon our nuptial hour; And I had thought forever by thy side With bursting buds of hope in youth to dwell; But one by one Time strewed thy petals wide, And every hope’s wan look a grief can tell; For I had thoughtless lived beneath his sway, Who like a tyrant dealeth with us all,— Crowning each rose, though rooted in decay, With charms that shall the spirit’s love enthral, And, for a season, turn the soul’s pure eyes From virtue’s bloom that time and death defies.”

Out of this valley of sadness the spirit rises on bolder wing, as the melancholy mood passes away,—

“Hearts of eternity, hearts of the deep! Proclaim from land to sea your mighty fate; How that for you no living comes too late, How ye cannot in Theban labyrinth creep, How ye great harvests from small surface reap, Shout, excellent band, in grand primeval strain, Like midnight winds that foam along the main,— And do all things rather than pause to weep. A human heart knows naught of littleness, Suspects no man, compares with no one’s ways, Hath in one hour most glorious length of days, A recompense, a joy, a loveliness; Like eaglet keen, shoots into azure far, And always dwelling nigh is the remotest star.”

Here, as Landor said, “is a sonnet, and the sonnet admits not that approach to the prosaic which is allowable in the ballad.” For this reason Mr. Alcott, who began his poetical autobiography, when he was eighty years old, in a ballad measure, has now passed into the majesty of the sonnet, as he has come to those passages of life which will not admit prosaic treatment. Moderately used, and not worked to death, as Wordsworth employed it, the sonnet is a great uplifter of poesy. It calls to the reader, as the early Christian litanies did to the worshipper, Sursum corda, Raise your thoughts! The canzonet lets us down again into the pathetic, the humorous, or the fanciful,—though in this volume the canzonet generally betokens sadness. It may easily become an ode, as in the verses on Garfield: indeed the ode may be considered as an extended canzonet, or the canzonet as a brief ode. It is the sonnet that chiefly concerns us now, and that form of the sonnet which deals with love; since the germ of this book was a romance of love, seeking to express itself in the uplifting strain and tender cadence of successive sonnets; which lead us though green pastures and beside the still waters, and then to the shore of the resounding sea,—itself worthy of a sonnet which I have somewhere heard:—

“Ah mournful Sea! Yet to our eyes he wore The placid look of some great god at rest; With azure arms he clasped the embracing shore, While gently heaved the billows of his breast; We scarce his voice could hear, and then it seemed The happy murmur of a lover true, Who, in the sweetness of his sleep, hath dreamed Of kisses falling on his lips like dew. Far off, the blue and gleaming hills above, The Sun looked through his veil of thinnest haze, As coy Diana, blushing at her love, Half hid with her own light her earnest gaze, When on the shady Latmian slope she found Fair-haired Endymion slumbering on the ground.”

This is one picture in the kaleidoscope of Aphrodite, who was a sea-born goddess, and partial to her native element. Yet it is not through the eye alone that she ensnares us, but with the music of birds,—and in poetry her own darling bird is not the dove, but the nightingale,—a stranger to our orchards and forests, but familiar to the groves of the Muse. A poet, by no means happy in his love in after years, thus saluted this bird, with music as sweet as her own,—