When man sees his loved one laid away forever, he naturally longs to preserve the memory of the departed to succeeding generations, to erect some permanent memorial. Funereal monuments are characteristic of every race and have proved the most enduring records of the past. The inscriptions upon these tombs are early records of the elegiac spirit.
The epitaph is elegy in miniature. “To define an epitaph is useless; everyone knows it is an inscription on a tomb. An epitaph is indeed commonly panegyrical, because we are seldom distinguished by a stone but by our friends,” says Dr. Johnson.
This epitaph was written by Robert Wilde in the seventeenth century:
Here lies a piece of Christ; a star in dust;
A vein of gold; a china dish that must
Be used in heaven, when God shall feast the just.
The sonnet may be addressed to any person or thing and is the direct personal expression of the author’s feeling. It is like the ode, and also partakes of the general nature of the elegy, but it differs from both in the rigidity of the rules of form that govern it. Sonnets originated in Italy, and the genuine Italian sonnet is very exacting in form. It must consist of exactly fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. These lines are divided into two groups, one of which consists of eight lines or two quatrains, the whole known as the octave. The remaining six lines constitute the sestet. The first and last line of each quatrain rhyme together, while the middle lines of each form the second rhyme. In the sestet usually the first line rhymes with the fourth, the second with the fifth and the third with the sixth. As a whole the sonnet contains one idea, which in the octave is general, in the sestet specific, for the sestet expresses the conclusion of the octave.
The difficulties of composition under such arbitrary limitations are evident, and it is not to be wondered at that even famous poets have utterly failed when they have essayed to write in this form. The sonnet has met with severest criticism, some writers failing to see any beauty in it. Coleridge says: “And when at last the poor thing is toiled and hammered into fit shape, it is in general racked and tortured prose rather than anything resembling poetry.” Though Lord Byron wrote a few himself he defined the sonnet as “The most puling, petrifying, stupidly Platonic composition.”
But this is hardly fair to the many exquisitely beautiful lyrics that in this form grace the English language. Those “little pictures painted well,” those “monuments of a moment” are among our most graceful poems, and the reader who has not learned to delight in a beautiful sonnet has missed the most refined pleasure English literature has to give.
The following exquisite sonnet, Victor and Vanquished, by Longfellow, is formed on the Italian model:
As one who long hath fled with panting breath
Before his foe, bleeding and near to fall,
I turn and set my back against the wall,
And look thee in the face, triumphant Death.
I call for aid, and no one answereth;
I am alone with thee, who conquerest all;
Yet me thy threatening form doth not appall,
For thou art but a phantom and a wraith;
Wounded and weak, sword broken at the hilt,
With armor shattered, and without a shield,
I stand unmoved; do with me what thou wilt;
I can resist no more, but will not yield.
This is no tournament where cowards tilt;
The vanquished here is victor of the field.
How many verses in this sonnet? What is the meter? What is the rhyme scheme? Through how many lines is the rhyme scheme the same as that followed in the Italian sonnet?