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old hand
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Song of the Enthusiast Mav asks me how the quilting goes To help me attain new station But I suspect just answering that Would end in flagellation Therefore, I indulge a little rhyme As I do graduate To keep the spirit of the thread"Mav, quilting's going great!" I hope no one finds this post
To be trivial or obscene
I'm pleased as punch to graduate
Without pulling a Quordlepleen... 
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enthusiast
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Jazzoctopus:
wordcrazy, I see your sonnet sonnet, and I raise you another:
Jazzoctopus,
I am not a good gambler, I do not know when to fold so here's another from Wordsworth again:
SCORN NOT THE SONNET
Scorn not the sonnet; critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honors; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's woundl
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camoens soothed an exile grief;
The sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow; a glow-worm lamp,
It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faeryland
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!
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I am not a good gambler, I do not know when to fold
neither am I:
A SONNET UPON SONNETS
by Robert Burns
Fourteen, a sonneteer thy praises sings;
What magic myst'ries in that number lie!
Your hen hath fourteen eggs beneath her wings
That fourteen chickens to the roost may fly.
Fourteen full pounds the jockey's stone must be;
His age fourteen - a horse's prime is past.
Fourteen long hours too oft the Bard must fast;
Fourteen bright bumpers - bliss he ne'er must see!
Before fourteen, a dozen yields the strife;
Before fourteen - e'en thirteen's strength is vain.
Fourteen good years - a woman gives us life;
Fourteen good men - we lose that life again.
What lucubrations can be more upon it?
Fourteen good measur'd verses make a sonnet.
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old hand
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Please don't stop - both of you . I am enjoying this. I wonder how many sonnets on sonnets there are.
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enthusiast
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Posts: 275 |
I am scraping the bottom of the barrel here:
A SONNET
A Sonnet is a moment's monument,-
Memorial from the Soul's eternity
To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,
Whether for lustral rite ro dire portent,
Of its own ardous fullness reverent:
Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see
Its flowering crest impearled and orient.
A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals
The soul--its converse, to what Power 'tis due:
Whether for tribute to the august appeals
Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue.
It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath,
In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
(1828-1882)
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old hand
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well, sometimes the best stuff is at the bottom of the barrel:
AN ENIGMA
by Edgar Allen Poe
"Seldom we find," says Solomon Don Dunce,
"Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet.
Through all the flimsy things we see at once
As easily as through a Naples bonnet--
Trash of all trash?--how can a lady don it?
Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff--
Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff
Twirls into trunk-paper while you con it."
And, veritable, Sol is right enough.
The general tuckermanities are arrant
Bubbles--ephemeral and so transparent--
But this is, now,--you may depend on it--
Stable, opaque, immortal--all by dint
Of the dear names that lie concealed within't.
This from the site from which I found this one: The "dear name" concealed within An Enigma can be found by reading the first letter of the first line, the second letter of the second line, etc. to the end of the sonnet--she was a poet and friend of Poe's.
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enthusiast
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Posts: 275 |
Jazzoctopus
well, sometimes the best stuff is at the bottom of the barrel
I admire your optimism. Can you hear that really horrible sound of metal against metal---s-c-r-a-p-i-n-g?
Have you heard of James Russell Lowell? He must be an ancestor of Robert Lowell.
Well, here's what he says of a sonnet, written when he was very young:
SONNET
If some small savor creep into my rhyme
Of the old poets, if some words I use,
Neglected long, which have the lusty thews
Of that gold-haired and earnest-hearted time,
Whose loving joy and sorrow all sublime
Have given our tongue its starry eminence,--
It is not pride, God knows, but reverence
Which hath grown in me since my childhood's prime;
Wherein I feel like my poor lyre is strung
With soul-strings like to theirs, and that I have
No right to muse their holy graves among,
If I can be a custom-fettered slave,
And, in mine own true spirit, am not brave
To speak what rusheth upward to my tongue.
James Russell Lowell
(1819-1891)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Here's another by By James Russell Lowell...especially appropriate today as we are having a perfect June Day!
What Is So Rare As A Day in June
AND what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays;
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,
An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
The flush of life may well be seen
Thrilling back over hills and valleys;
The cowslip startles in meadows green,
The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean
To be some happy creature's palace;
The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o'errun
With the deluge of summer it receives;
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,-
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?
Now is the high-tide of the year,
And whatever of life hath ebbed away
Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer,
Into every bare inlet and creek and bay;
Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it,
We are happy now because God wills it;
No matter how barren the past may have been,
'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green;
We sit in the warm shade and feel right well
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell;
We may shut our eyes but we cannot help knowing
That skies are clear and grass is growing;
The breeze comes whispering in our ear,
That dandelions are blossoming near,
That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing,
That the river is bluer than the sky,
That the robin is plastering his house hard by;
And if the breeze kept the good news back,
For our couriers we should not lack;
We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,-
And hark! How clear bold chanticleer,
Warmed with the new wine of the year,
Tells all in his lusty crowing!
Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how;
Everything is happy now,
Everything is upward striving;
'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,-
'Tis for the natural way of living:
Who knows whither the clouds have fled?
In the unscarred heaven they leave not wake,
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed,
The heart forgets its sorrow and ache;
The soul partakes the season's youth,
And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth,
Like burnt-out craters healed with snow.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 2,661 |
Haiku
June is the promise
Summer keeps in lavish ways
and Autumn fulfills.
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enthusiast
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wow.....
What Is So Rare As A Day in June
I am so glad somebody else knows of James Russell Lowell!
I agree yesterday was a gorgeous June day. My heart was just so full of joy at the bounty of nature. A friend and I toured the gardens of Princeton and what a riot of colors it all was. It was worthy of sublime poetry and JRL's just fit the bill.
The cowslip startles in meadows green,
The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean
To be some happy creature's palace;
The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o'errun
With the deluge of summer it receives;
Thanks wow
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