England did not do any too well by the sonnet in the early days when she took it from Italy. She roughened it. She coarsened it. She made it a trifle pot-bellied. She taught it to drink ale, instead of wine. She took the classic, Latin profile and gave it two round eyes and a turn-up nose.
And yet I know English sonnets that are lovely. Milton wrote one. Keats wrote one. Mrs. Browning wrote more than one. George Pellew wrote three, three great ones, on Greek subjects, I seem to remember. To do it he made himself, in spirit, un-English. He slipped upon his shoulder the graceful garment of another race and turned back, for rare creative moments, toward the red, wine-making south. Mrs. Browning did something similar, although she only went as far as Italy. She was prodigiously instructed, however, in both Greek and Latin.
The calm spaces between words in Italian sonnet writers is vastly more difficult of realizing than people think. It is harder to sit perfectly still than to stand upon your head at stated intervals, wearing bells and motley. You can not catch Art, (with either a large or a small letter) by running after her and sprinkling salt upon her tail. Genuine Success is something besides a large noise and a yellow electric light.
The calm gliding into the first line of an accomplished sonnet writer of old Italy, gives me the same sensation as, after noise, discomfort of a storm, the calm gliding into a harbor, blue, safe, sheltered, smiling, serene. I have felt this strongly in opening lines of Dante’s Vita Nuova. They recur to me again and again.
Ballata i voi che tu ritrovi Amore
Consider the jeweled setting of vowels, their wise interlining, the grace, consider, the beginning, that does not disturb the poise of silence, nor invade harshly its suave secrecy.
Or
Tutti li miei penser parlare d’Amore
Donne ch’avete intellette d’Amore,
i vo’con voi de la mia donna dire.