Sonnets by the Nawab Nizamat Jung Bahadur

by Sir Nizamat Jung

In the octave (the first eight lines) the first, fourth, fifth and eighth lines must rhyme on the same sound, and the second, third, sixth and seventh, must rhyme on another sound.

In the sestet (the last six lines) more liberty of rhyme and arrangement is permitted, but a rhymed couplet at the end is not usual except when the sonnet departs from the Italian model and is on the English or, as we say, "Shakespearian" pattern.

Each sonnet must be complete; and, even if one of a sequence, it should contain within itself everything necessary to the understanding of it. It must be the expression of one emotion, one fact, one idea, and "the continuity of the thought, idea, or emotion must be unbroken throughout." "Dignity and repose," "expression ample yet reticent," are qualities which one of our ablest modern critics emphasises as essential, and the end must always be more impressive than the beginning,—the reader must be carried onwards and upwards, and left with a definite feeling that in what has been said there is neither superfluity nor omission, but rather a completeness which precludes all wish or need for a longer poem.

How difficult this is for the poet can only be realised by trying to achieve it.

The earliest writers of English sonnets were two very romantic and gallant men of action, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey,—both destined to brief brilliant lives and tragic deaths. They were followed by Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney and a host of Elizabethan poets, courtly and otherwise. But it is Shakespeare whose Sonnets (though not conforming to the Petrarchan model) show the most force and fire of any in our language until those of Milton.

To analyse the variations of the Shakesperian, Spenserian and Miltonian forms is, however, unnecessary to our present purpose, as the Sonnet Sequence we are now prefacing is based on the Petrarchan model. Strictly speaking, the Petrarchan sestet (the last six lines) should have three separate rhymed sounds; the first and fourth lines, the second and fifth, and the third and sixth should form the three rhymes. But this rule is by no means invariably followed; even Wordsworth and Rossetti often rhymed the first with the third, and the second with the fourth lines; and sometimes used only two sounds,—the first, third, and fifth lines making one rhyme and the second, fourth, and sixth the other.

As already said, these liberties are permitted, for the sestet is not under such arbitrary regulations as the octave.

There are writers who keep all the rules, and yet leave their readers cold; and others who are technically less correct, but in whom the vigour and intensity of emotion is swiftly felt and silences adverse criticism. The ideal is to combine deep and exalted feeling with perfect expression, and produce a whole which goes to the heart like a beautiful piece of music, and satisfies the mind—like one of those ancient Greek gems which, in a small space, presents engraved images symbolic of sublime ideas vast as the universe.

The Nawab Nizamat Jung has written in English several sonnets which we should admire even if English were his native language. But if any of us would like to form some estimate of the difficulties he has surmounted, let us sit down and try to express in a sonnet in any foreign language our own thoughts and beliefs. We shall then the better appreciate what he has achieved.

As, however, while the Great War lasts, few of us have leisure for literary experiments, it will perhaps be best to read these Sonnets primarily for their soul and spirit. In melody and expression they are of varying degrees of merit and completeness, but in the inspiring ideal they consistently embody they rise to heights which have been scaled only by the noblest. In tone and temper—as already said—they are akin to the Sonnets to Vittoria Colonna by Michelangelo,—of whom it was written by one who knew him well, "Though I have held such long intercourse with him I have never heard from his mouth a word, that was not most honourable…. In him there are no base thoughts…. He loves not only human beauty, but everything that is beautiful and exquisite in its own kind,—marvelling at it with a wonderful admiration."