413. The Sonnet

NUNS fret not at their convent’s narrow room;

And hermits are contented with their cells;

And students with their pensive citadels;

Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,

Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,

High as the highest peak of Furness-fells,

Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:

In truth the prison, unto which we doom

Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,

In sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be bound

Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground;

Pleased if some souls (for such there needs must be)

Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,

Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

SCORN not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frown’d,

Mindless of its just honours; with this key

Shakespeare unlock’d his heart; the melody

Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch’s wound;

A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;

With it Cam˜ens sooth’d an exile’s grief;

The Sonnet glitter’d a gay myrtle leaf

Amid the cypress with which Dante crown’d

His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,

It cheer’d mild Spenser, call’d from Faery-land

To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp

Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand

The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew

Soul-animating strains—alas, too few!