dots-menu
×
The Book of the Sonnet
But woman’s empire, holier, more refined, / Moulds, moves, and sways the fallen yet God-breathed mind.
Woman’s Empire Defined, ll. 4–5.
Sarah Josepha
Hale

The Book of the Sonnet

Edited by Leigh Hunt and S. Adams Lee

The 530 selections by 136 authors span English and American literature up to the late Nineteenth Century, with an extensive list of women sonneteers.

Bibliographic Record

Contents

Introductory Letter

BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS, 1867
NEW YORK: BARTLEBY.COM, 2012

An Essay on the Cultivation, History, and Varieties of the Species of Poem called the Sonnet
I. On the Desirableness of Cultivating the Sonnet
II. Of the Nature and Properties of the Sonnet, particularly the Sonnet called Legitimate
III. Of Guittone d’ Arezzo, and of the Sonnets of Dante and Petrarca
IV. Of the other Principal Sonnet-Writers of Italy
V. Of Other Legitimate but Obsolete Forms of the Sonnet, particularly the Comic Sonnet
VI. Of English Sonnets, and of the Sonnet Illegitimate, or Quatorzen
American Sonnets and Sonneteers
English Sonnets
Sir Thomas Wyatt.
1503–1542.
Brunet and Phyllis
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey.
1517–1547.
Description of Spring and Summer
Recollections of the Time He Spent in Windsor Castle
Epitaph on His Squire, Thomas Clere
On the Life and Death of Sardanapalus
Sir Philip Sidney.
1554–1586.
On His Having Obtained a Prize at a Tournament
Death an Ordinance of Nature, and Therefore Good
Sonnet to the Moon
Sonnet to Sleep
Sir Walter Raleigh.
1554?–1618.
On Spenser’s “Faery Queen
Edmund Spenser.
1552?–1599.
To His Sonnets, on Sending Them to His Mistress
To One Who Objected to Pride in His Mistress
Spring Sent to His Mistress Like a Herald
Absence Lamented, Dove-like
William Shakespeare.
1564–1616.
The Poet Laments to a Friend His Profession as an Actor
The Consciousness of Being Loved by a Noble Nature a Triumph over All Troubles
To His Lady upon Her Playing on the Virginals
What Singing Birds and Flowers Are in the Absence of the Beloved Person
True Love Not at the Mercy of Time and Circumstance
He Laments That the Countenance of Some Great and Worthy Patron Seems to Be Diverted from Him
Affection Most Loving When It Most Fears to Lose
True Self-Sacrifice of Love
Ben Jonson.
1572–1637.
To the King’s Household on Their Withholding His Allowance of Sack
William Drummond, of Hawthornden.
1585–1649.
Youth Unexpectedly Smitten by Love
Sense of the Fragility of All Things and of the Unseasonableness of Passion in Love, No Preventive of Love or Poetry
He Mourns the Loss of His Mistress
Recollections of His Lost Bride
To a Bird Singing
The Praise of a Solitary Life
John Milton.
1608–1674.
When the Assault Was Intended to the City
On the Detraction Which Followed upon the Writing of Certain Treatises
On the Late Massacre in Piedmont
On His Blindness
On the Same
To the Nightingale
Invitation to an Attic Feast
A Dream of His Lost Wife
Thomas Gray.
1716–1771.
On the Death of His Friend West
Thomas Warton.
1728–1790.
Written on a Blank Leaf of Dugdale’s Monasticon
After Seeing the Collection of Pictures at Wilton House
On Revisiting the River Loddon
Samuel Jackson Pratt.
1749–1814.
Revisiting a Birthplace Which Was Not Happy
Charlotte Smith.
1749–1806.
Poetry and Sorrow
Written at the Close of Spring
On Children at Play
To the Moon
On the Departure of the Nightingale
Out of Doors While the Hamlet Is Sleeping
Anna Seward.
1747–1809.
Rising Early to Read, on a Winter’s Morning
Consolatory Power of a Love of Nature
No Barrenness in Nature without Beauty
A Stormy November Evening, Gradually Clearing up in a Mountainous Country
Helen Maria Williams.
1761?–1827.
To Hope
Mrs. Mary Darby Robinson.
1757?–1800.
The Temple of Chastity
Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges.
1762–1837.
Echo and Silence
William Lisle Bowles.
1762–1850.
Church Bells
A Grave in a Convent
To Time
A Landscape
Winter Evening at Home
Hope
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
1772–1834.
On Leaving School
With Fielding’s Amelia
On Seeing a Youth Affectionately Welcomed by a Sister
To Bowles
Thoughts During the Singing of a Beautiful Song
To the Author of “The Robbers
On the Last Failure of Kosciusko
News of the Birth of a Child
A New-born Child and Its Parent
Farewell to Love
Fancy in Nubibus
To the River Otter
Charles Lamb.
1775–1834.
To Miss Kelly, the Actress
Craving for Leisure
In the Album of Edith S——.
Written at Cambridge
Charles Lloyd.
1775–1839.
To November
Bernard Barton.
1784–1849.
To My Wife
To a Grandmother
William Wordsworth.
1770–1850.
Pleasant, Voluntary Prison of the Sonnet
Placid Objects of Contemplation
Wanting Sleep
Landscape Painting
A Light in a Distant Window among Mountains
Personal Talk
Personal Talk (continued)
Personal Talk and Books
Personal Talk (concluded)
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1803
A Parsonage in Oxfordshire
London, 1802
Sonnet: “It is a beauteous evening, calm and free
To the Planet Venus,—An Evening Star
After Visiting the Field of Waterloo
The Worst Pangs of Sorrow
Death Conquering and Death Conquered
Robert Southey.
1774–1843.
To a Lark
The Ship Setting out
The Ship in a Storm
The Ship Returning
Edward Hovell-Thurlow, Lord Thurlow.
1781–1829.
Summer
The Harvest Moon
Professor John Wilson.
1785–1854.
The Evening Cloud
The Lake in Storm
The Lake in Calm
Nature’s Organ-Music in the Mountains
Charles Mackay.
1814–1889.
Angelic Visitants
Love and Beauty
William Sotheby.
1757–1833.
The Winter’s Morn
Henry Kirke White.
1785–1806.
On Hearing the Sounds of an Æolian Harp
Retirement
Joseph Blanco White.
1775–1841.
To Night
George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron.
1788–1824.
The Prisoner of Chillon
Heavenly and Earthly Beauty Combined
Percy Bysshe Shelley.
1792–1822.
To Wordsworth
Political Greatness
Ozymandias
Sonnet: “Ye hasten to the dead!”
John Keats.
1795–1821.
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer
On the Grasshopper and Cricket
On Reading “The Flower and the Leaf” of Chaucer
On Leigh Hunt’s Poem, the ‘Story of Rimini’
The Lover Left by His Love at Evening
On Fame
To Sleep
To J. H. Reynolds
Answer to a Sonnet Ending Thus
His Last Sonnet
James Henry Leigh Hunt.
1784–1859.
Quiet Evenings
To the Grasshopper and the Cricket
To My Wife
To Kosciusko
On a Lock of Milton’s Hair
The Nile
Vincent Leigh Hunt.
1823–1852.
The Deformed Child
Laman Blanchard.
1803–1845.
Creativeness of a Loving Eye
A Wish for the Unfadingness of the Loving Eye
Hartley Coleridge.
1796–1849.
First Words of Adam
Sonnet to a Friend
Long time a child
May-time in England
Second Nuptials
A Premature Old Bachelor, He Congratulates a Bridegroom
Mrs. Felicia Dorothea Hemans.
1793–1835.
The Lilies of the Field
A Vernal Thought
Flowers
The Twilight Hour
Sabbath Sonnet
Thomas Hood.
1799–1845.
Written in a Volume of Shakespeare
To Fancy
To a Sleeping Child (I.)
To a Sleeping Child (II.)
Death
Love
Bryan Waller Procter.
1787–1874.
Spring
A Still Place
To Adelaide
To Edith—1845
William Henry Whitworth The Pyramids
Nipped Buds Better Than Later Disappointments
Thomas Doubleday.
1790–1870.
The Poet’s Solitude
Life
William Green A Sultry Summer Afternoon
Melody and Harmony
Gentle Greatness Undervalued, till Lost
Charles Strong My window’s open to the evening sky
Sunrise at Sea, on a Southern Misty Morning
A Moment of Dread in Modern Pompeii
Lovely Companionship
Richard Chenevix Trench.
1807–1886.
Enjoy the Present
To Nicholas, Emperor of Russia
To Silvio Pellico
Sir John Hanmer.
1809–1881.
America
Petrarca
The Steamboat
The Pine Woods
Singing-Birds
Art
Chaucer
The Merchant
Henry Alford.
1810–1871.
Rise, said the Master, come unto the feast
Arthur Brooke Resignation
Edmund Peel To the River Tees
Zeal without Knowledge
To Winter
Sir Aubrey de Vere.
1788–1846.
Time Misspent
Origin of the Soul
The Opening of the Tomb of Charlemagne
Diocletian at Salona
Queen Elizabeth
David Lester Richardson.
1801–1865.
To My Twin Boys
Fine Weather at Sea
A Calm after a Gale
Evening at Sea
Henry Ellison.
1811–1880.
On the Arrival of the Vessel Announcing the Settlement of Differences with America
Poetry a Daily Bread
By the Sea-shore
Against Pride of Intellect
A Privilege Worth a Hard Earning
A Music Yet Unknown, Remaining to Be Heard on Earth
Egerton Webbe.
1810–1840.
To a Fog
Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton.
1809–1885.
Happiness
After Revisiting Cambridge after a Long Absence
To Charles Lamb
The Forest
Thomas Wade.
1805–1875.
Shelley and Keats, and Their “Reviewer
Shelley
A Prophecy
Calvus
Thomas James Judkin Special Pleading
Eureka!”
A Character, Drawn from the Life
Picking and Stealing
George Powell Thomas To Constance, in Absence
The Same Subject
To Fame
The First Railway Train in India
Jumnotree
George James De Wilde The Water-Mill
Wheathamstead
Eydon Hall
On the Arrival of Spring
John Watson Dalby At Berkhamstead
The Subject Continued
A Wayside Adventure
Same Subject Continued
A Sleepless Night
At the Aust Ferry Hotel
A Rencontre at Tytherington
Alfred Tennyson.
1809–1892.
The Polish Insurrection
A Soldier-Priest
Sonnet: “O, were I loved as I desire to be
Charles Tennyson.
1808–1879.
The Delights of Intellect Unperturbing
On Seeing a Child Blush on His First View of a Corpse
The Rainbow
The Ringlet
On Startling Some Pigeons
Silkworms and Spiders
Frederick Tennyson.
1807–1898.
The Village Benefactress
Her Visits to Her Mother’s Grave
Her Secret Grief
Her Sickness and Recovery
Her Exemption from the Common Aspects of Decay
A Wish for Her During the Remainder of Her Life
Aubrey Thomas de Vere.
1814–1902.
Reasons for Being Beloved
Requesting to Be Judged by the Desire, and Not by the Desert
Love Self-Sacrificed
Love Vindicating Its Rejecter
Venice by Day
Venice in the Evening
Independence
Correggio’s Cupolas at Parma
Written While Sailing on the Gulf of Lepanto
Edmund Ollier.
1827–1886.
On Wilson’s Picture of Solitude
A Dream
A Vision of Old Babylon
The Subject of Babylon Continued (I.)
The Subject of Babylon Continued (II.)
Caroline Elizabeth Sarah (Sheridan) Norton.
1808–1877.
Sonnet: “Like an enfranchised bird, that wildly springs
To My Books
Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
1806–1861.
Expressionless
Tears
Perplexed Music
Futurity with the Departed
The Poet
Hugh Stuart Boyd: His Blindness
Hugh Stuart Boyd: Legacies
Flush or Faunus
The face of all the world is changed
What can I give thee back
Can it be right to give what I can give?”
Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed
And therefore, if to love can be desert
Indeed this very love which is my boast
And wilt thou have me fashion into speech
David Gray.
1838–1861.
To the Mavis
To a Brooklet
To the Moon
Morphia
The Moon
Maidenhood
The Luggie
Alexander Smith.
1830–1867.
Solitary at Christmas, but Not Sad
The Christmas Solitude Varied with the Christmas Streets
Prophetical Self-reflected Words
William Allingham.
1824–1889.
One’s Own Mood Reflected in a Day-dream
Autumnal Twilight, with Friends
One’s Own Tombstone
James Dodds.
1813–1874.
Craigcrook
John Hunter A Replication of Rhymes
Elia
Autumn Twilight
Day-dawn
John Stuart Blackie.
1809–1895.
To James Dodds and John Hunter
Highland Solitude
At Loch Ericht
Ben Muichdhui
The Statue of Albert Dürer at Nürnberg
Weimar
Berlin
Loch Ericht
American Sonnets
Colonel David Humphreys.
1753–1818.
The Soul
Addressed to His Royal Highness, the Prince of Brazil
Richard Bingham Davis.
1771–1799.
To Music
To the Setting Moon
To Felicia, on Her Return to New York
Robert Treat Paine.
1773–1811.
To Belinda
To the Country Girl
To Anna Louisa, on Her Ode to Fancy
Elegiac Sonnet
To Philenia, on a Stanza in Her Address to Myra
Washington Allston.
1779–1843.
On a Falling Group, in the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo
On Rembrandt, Occasioned by His Picture of Jacob’s Dream
On Seeing the Picture of Æolus, by Pellegrino Tibaldi
On the Death of Coleridge
On a Statue of an Angel, by Benaimé, of Rome
William Cullen Bryant.
1794–1878.
October
Midsummer
November
Consumption
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
1807–1882.
Autumn
Dante
The Good Shepherd
The Brook
James Gates Percival.
1795–1856.
The Poet
Night
Winter is now around me
The blue heaven spreads before me
Jones Very.
1813–1880.
The Robin
Morning
Thy Beauty Fades
The Spirit-land
George Hill.
1796–1871.
Liberty
Spring
Park Benjamin.
1809–1864.
Flowers Love’s Truest Language
The Stars
Spring
Twilight
Is this a painting?”
A Storm in Autumn
Domestic Love
The Same
Snow
To a Lady
Henry Theodore Tuckerman.
1813–1871.
Freedom
On a Landscape, by Backhuysen
To Jenny Lind
Desolation
To One Deceived
O for a castle on a woodland height!”
The rain-drops patter on the casement still
The buds have opened, and in leafy pride
What though our dream is broken?”
William Gilmore Simms.
1806–1870.
Trophies—How Planted
Where Planted
The Triumph
Glory and Enduring Fame
William Henry Burleigh.
1812–1871.
The Brook
Rain
James Dixon.
1814–1873.
To a Robin
Connecticut River
Sunset after a Storm
Moonlight in June
To Mrs. Sigourney
Rev. Norman Pinney.
1800–1862.
Calm Twilight! in thy wild and stilly time
Still unto thee, my brightest, fairest, best
Hugh Peters.
1807–1831.
Ad Poetas
To the Moon
George Henry Boker.
1823–1890.
I do assure thee, love, each kiss of thine
I shall be faithful, though the weary years
The Awaking of the Poetic Faculty
Love is that orbit of the restless soul
Where lags my mistress while the drowsy year
No gentle touches of your timid hand
I have been mounted on life’s topmost wave
To the Memory of M. A. R.
To J. M. B.
No hope is mine, no comfort mine
Absence from thee is something worse than death
To England
James Russell Lowell.
1819–1891.
I ask not for those thoughts, that sudden leap
To M. W., on Her Birthday
Beloved! in the noisy city here
To A. C. L.
Richard Henry Wilde.
1789–1847.
To Lord Byron
To the Mocking-bird
John Howard Bryant.
1807–1902.
There is a magic in the moon’s mild ray
“’T is Autumn, and my steps have led me far
George Henry Calvert.
1803–1889.
On the Fifty-fifth Sonnet of Shakespeare
To the Statue of Eve, by Powers
Nathaniel Parker Willis.
1806–1867.
Storm had been on the hills
Acrostic Sonnet
William Henry Cuyler Hosmer.
1814–1877.
On a Cascade near Wyoming
Night
Epes Sargent.
1813–1880.
The Departure
The Awakening
Tropical Weather
Bayard Taylor.
1825–1878.
From the North
To G. H. B.
To E. C. S.
To R. H. S.
To J. L. G.
Richard Henry Stoddard.
1825–1903.
To Bayard Taylor
To Edmund Clarence Stedman
To James Lorimer Graham, Jr.
Florence Nightingale
Colonel Frederick Taylor
To Jervis McEntee, Artist
Edmund Clarence Stedman.
1833–1908.
A Mother’s Picture
Hope Deferred
The Swallow
To B. T.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
1836–1907.
Euterpe
Pursuit and Possession
Accomplices
Egypt
Paul Hamilton Hayne.
1830–1886.
Ancient Fables
Pent in this common sphere of sensual shows
Now, while the Rear-Guard of the flying Year
October
Poets of the Olden Time
O God! what glorious seasons bless thy world!”
O Faithful heart! on balmy nights like this
An hour agone!—and prostrate Nature lay
Between the sunken sun, and the new moon
Spirits there are inwrought with vilest clay
Thomas Buchanan Read.
1822–1872.
The Master Bards
To Wordsworth
Indian Summer
Beatrice
John R. Thompson.
1823–1873.
Sonnets to Winter. I. Old Wine to Drink
John Esten Cooke.
1830–1886.
Sonnets to Winter. II. Old Wood to Burn
John R. Thompson.
1823–1873.
Sonnets to Winter. III. Old Books to Read
John Esten Cooke.
1830–1886.
Sonnets to Winter. IV. Old Friends to Love
Henry Timrod.
1828–1867.
At last, beloved Nature, I have met
Fate! seek me out some lake far off and lone
Are these wild thoughts thus fettered in my rhymes
Mary! I dare not call thy charms divine
Which are the clouds, and which the mountains?”
Were I the Poet Laureate of the Fairies
William H. Timrod.
1792–1838.
An Autumnal Day in Carolina
The May Queen
John Godfrey Saxe.
1816–1887.
To a Clam
Bereavement
John R. Tait.
1834–1909.
To a Poet, with a Copy of Verses
Written at Vallombrosa
To ———.
The years, swift waves upon the sea of Time
Poets
John James Piatt.
1835–1917.
Learning Prayers
C. E. Da Ponte A Lover’s Sonnet
H. Now tripping forth, the fairy-footed Spring
Nay, chide me not that I am jealous, love
Come, dear one, smile consent!”
Come, dearest, to my heart
Jedidiah Vincent Huntington.
1815–1862.
On Reading Bryant’s Poem of “The Winds
George Lunt.
1803–1885.
O friend! whose genial spirit
A Statesman
Henry Lynden Flash.
1835?–1914.
Adele
Albert Laighton.
1829–1887.
Night and its dews come silently to earth
Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber.
1814–1890.
On a Picture of Lillie
Domestic
Church Music
The Snow
Moonshine
A Summer Night
Charles Fenno Hoffman.
1806–1884.
To an Autumn Rose
Anonymous O’er the far waters floats the boatman’s song
To Poesy
To My Wife
Sabbath Morning
To a Cloud
Female Sonneteers
Mrs. Elizabeth Oakes Smith.
1806–1893.
Expressionless
Regrets
Poesy
An Incident
The Unattained
The Wife
The Dream
Wayfarers
To the Hudson
Frances Anne Kemble.
1809–1893.
To Shakespeare
What is my lady like?”
To the Nightingale
To Shakespeare
By jasper founts, whose falling waters make
Spirit of all sweet sounds!”
Whene’er I recollect the happy time
Like one who walketh in a plenteous land
Anne Charlotte Lynch.
1815–1891.
On Seeing the Ivory Statue of Christ
The honey-bee, that wanders all day long
Night closes round me, and wild threatening forms
As some dark stream within a cavern’s breast
The mountain lake, o’ershadowed by the hills
Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale.
1788–1879.
Woman’s Empire Defined
The Daughter
The Sister
The Wife
The Mother
Mrs. Mary Noel McDonald Come with thy rose-wreaths, fair and laughing June!”
I would be with thee on the sunny hills
Alas! it may not be
The First Snow
The Frozen Stream
Winter Twilight
Night
Mrs. Elizabeth Clementine Kinney.
1810–1889.
Fading Autumn
A Winter Night
Cultivation
Encouragement
To a Violet Found in December
Mrs. Anna Maria Lowell In Absence
Mrs. Elizabeth Jesup Eames.
1813–1856.
Twilight
The Moon
The Star
A Cloud
Mrs. Elizabeth F. Swift To Estelle
Moonlight upon the hills!”
Mrs. Emma Catharine Embury.
1806–1863.
Confidence in Heaven
He who has travelled through some weary day
Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman.
1803–1878.
Faded Flowers
Mrs. Anna Maria Wells To a Young Mother
Mrs. Elizabeth Fries Ellet.
1818–1877.
Shepherd, with meek brow wreathed with blossoms sweet
O weary heart, there is a rest for thee!”
Mrs. Alice Bradley Neal.
1828–1863.
Midnight
Daybreak
Tranquilla If all the world had told me thou wert false
I love thee yet!”
Sarah Gould Pauline