(George Herbert: Sin. 1631.)
In vain to me the smiling mornings shine,
And reddening Phœbus lifts his golden fire;
The birds in vain their amorous descant join,
Or cheerful fields resume their green attire.
These ears, alas! for other notes repine,
A different object do these eyes require;
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine,
And in my breast the imperfect joys expire.
Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer,
And new-born pleasure brings to happier men;
The fields to all their wonted tribute bear;
To warm their little loves the birds complain;
I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear,
And weep the more because I weep in vain.
(Gray: On the Death of Richard West. 1742.)
On the place of this sonnet in the eighteenth century, see p. [277], above.
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 bank; and then, a traveler, go
From mount to mount through Cloudland, gorgeous land!
Or listening to the tide, with closed sight,
Be that blind bard who, on the Chian strand
By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,
Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee
Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.
(Coleridge: Fancy in Nubibus. 1819.)
The sonnets of Coleridge, as has already been noted, were written under the influence of those of Bowles, and are not of the Italian type. He defined the sonnet as "a short poem in which some lonely feeling is developed," thus emphasizing, like Wordsworth, the idea of unity rather than of progressive structure.
Darkly, as by some gloomed mirror glassed,
Herein at times the brooding eye beholds
The great scarred visage of the pompous Past,
But oftener only the embroidered folds
And soiled regality of his rent robe,
Whose tattered skirts are ruined dynasties
And cumber with their trailing pride the globe,
And sweep the dusty ages in our eyes;
Till the world seems a world of husks and bones
Where sightless Seers and Immortals dead,
Kings that remember not their awful thrones,
Invincible armies long since vanquished,
And powerless potentates and foolish sages
Lie 'mid the crumbling of the mossy ages.
(William Watson: History.)