Nos. clxv.-clxvi. BRYAN Waller ProctoR (1790-1874). Barry Cornwall is known chiefly as a song-writer, but he wrote some good sonnets. Nos. clxvii-clxix. MARK ANDRÉ RAFFALOVITCH. Mr. Raffalovitch's sonnets are among the best of those by our younger writers that markedly derive from Shakespeare's. He has allowed himself to be even more strongly influenced by the latter than did Julian Fane: he has not, however, the intellectual strength or reserve power of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt. He has published two highly interesting but unequal volumes of verse, the sonnets I have selected coming from the first, Cyril and Lionel: and other Poems. HARDWICKE D. RAWNSLEY. My attention was drawn to the fine descrip tive sonnets of Mr. Rawnsley, too late for the selection of one for appearance in the body of this book. I print one example here, excerpted from Sonnets of the English Lakes (Longmans). No. clxx. THE LAKE MIRROR: IN AUTUMN. We sailed from cape to cape, whose headlands grey We ventured in among the leafy sway Of watery woodland, and the russet spray Of fern and rosy briar, reflected clear, A depth and height of faint autumnal sky, A double pageant of the painted wood; Marbled by snow the mountain-tops close by ERNEST RHYS. Mr. Rhys is one of the latest recruits to the great army of literature. He has shown distinct literary judgment and capacity in his edition in the Canterbury Poets of Herbert, in his Introduction to a popular edition of The Mort D'Arthur, and in various magazine articles. Mr. Rhys is editor of the series of prose works, The Camelot Classics. No. clxxi. ERIC SUTHERLAND ROBERTSON. Mr. Eric Robertson is another of those who have not published their poems in book-form. Several of his sonnets have appeared in magazines, and a fine one called “A Vision of Pain,” in Mr. Caine's Sonnets of Three Centuries. NOTES. 313 His sonnets, such as I have seen, are characterised by originality of conception and fitting expression, and generally they answer to that searching test, adequacy of motive. Mr. Robertson's practical interest in educational questions, in addition to arduous though miscellaneous literary labours, have hitherto stood in the way of his taking the place among the younger writers to which his high capabilities entitle him. A year or two ago he published an interesting and useful little volume entitled English Poetesses. The following sonnet exemplifies the rapidity with which this complicated form can sometimes be written. Composed in St. Paul's Cathedral during or immediately after the special service noted below, it was hastily written down, was offered a few minutes later to the representative of the New York Herald, and was at once cabled to that journal, where it appeared a few hours subsequently. IN MEMORIAM. Sonnet written in St. Paul's Cathedral after the Funeral Anthem Through tears to look upon a tearful crowd High in the Dome, till angels seemed to fling The chant of England up through vault and cloud, Making ethereal register aloud At heaven's own gate-it was a sorrowing, Told that a good man's death is such a thing As makes Imperial purple of the shroud. Some creeds there be like runes we cannot spell, Nos. clxxii.-clxxiv. A. MARY F. ROBINSON. There have been few markedly tentative efforts. Personally, I do not think this volume of verse has yet been done full justice to. In 1884 was published The New Arcadia, a book that deservedly attracted very considerable attention; though some of Miss Robinson's most discriminating friends doubted the advisability of her attempting the reform of the condition of the agricultural classes by means of poetic special pleading. There are, unfortunately, too many examples of the ruin of poetic and artistic genius through the tendency (so rapidly growing into unconscious or uncontrolled habit) to "preach." Miss Robinson has a keen eye for nature, has earnest sympathies and insight, and a very sweet and true lyric voice: if she will but be loyal to herself, she may yet take a very high place indeed. She has also written Arden: A Romance, and an admirable Life of Emily Bronté (Eminent Women Series.) The sonnets I have selected are from her second volume of poems. In the New Arcadia there are two fine sonnets entitled "Apprehension,” which I have pleasure in quoting : I. O foolish dream, to hope that such as I Who answer only to thine easiest moods, Should fill my heart, as o'er my heart there broods The perfect fulness of thy memory! I flit across thy soul as white birds fly Across the untrodden desert solitudes : A moment's flash of wings; fair interludes That leave unchanged the eternal sand and sky. Even such to thee am I; but thou to me Even as the sea itself to the storm-tossed rill. Call to the land, and call unanswered still. II. As dreams the fasting nun of Paradise, And finds her gnawing hunger pass away In thinking of the happy bridal day That soon shall dawn upon her watching eyes, So, dreaming of your love, do I despise Harshness or death of friends, doubt, slow decay, And creep about me oft with fell surmise. NOTES. For you are true; and all I hoped you are : And very sweet my life is, having thee. Yet must I dream: should once the good planks start, 315 Nos. clxxv.-clxxvii. W. CALDWELL ROSCOE (1823-1859.) If Mr. W. Caldwell Roscoe had lived a few years longer he would almost certainly have ensured for himself an abiding reputation as a master of the sonnet. The few examples he left behind him, published and unpublished, are mostly very beautiful, one or two quite exceptionally So. (Vide Poems and Essays by the late William Caldwell Roscoe, Edited, with a Prefatory Memoir, by his Brother-in-Law, Richard Holt Hutton. 1860.) No. clxxv. This truly exquisite sonnet, so fine in conception, so lovely in expression, and so pathetic in its significance, has one serious flaw. That a man so scholarly and with so sensitive an ear could be guilty of the barbarism of Apollian is extraordinary. As regards the sixth word of the fifth line, it may be noted that both in the versions of 1851 and 1860 it was printed "white." That it was "while" in the original is known from the fact that in the proof-sheet there is a marginal correction of it to "white." Mr. Main saw this proof-sheet, but concluded that the poet had made an unintentional slip. Both Mr. Main and Mr. Caine print "while,” and this reading I have adopted also. "White" undoubtedly narrows the idea. No. clxxiv. This sonnet forms the epilogue to the fine tragedy Violenzia (1851), which is too little known. No. clxxviii. W. STANLEY ROSCOE (1782-1843). From the Poems (1834). historian, was father of Nos. clxxix.-clxxxiii. CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI. As I have already had occasion to remark, Miss Rossetti ranks foremost among living poetesses. She and she alone could write such magic lyrics as "Dream-Land." Her sonnets bear but a small proportion to her purely lyrical poems. Some were written at a very early age; they are all or mostly very sombre, but are as impressive as they are beautiful. I know of no other woman who has written sonnets like "The World," or "Vanity of Vanities." There is a very marked affinity between much of Miss Rossetti's work and that of her brother Gabriel. Nos. clxxxiv.-cxcv. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828-1882). It has taken time for the growth of widespread admiration of the sonnet work of this most imaginative of all the Victorian poets. There are already not a few among the best judges who consider him the greatest sonneteer of our language, his sonnets having the fundamental brain-work of Shakespeare's, the beauty of Mrs. Browning's, the dignity and, occasionally, the sunlit transparency of Wordsworth's, with a more startling and impressive vehemence, a greater voluminousness of urgent music. But I need not repeat what I have already in substance said in the Introduction. Even in a limited selection his sonnets speak for themselves. No. clxxxiv. This sonnet appears in the completed House of Life as “Soul's Beauty." It is specially suited to preface any selection of Rossetti's sonnets, from the eminently characteristic lines of its sestet. The picture for which "Sybilla Palmifera" was written is a very noble design. No. clxxxv. This is not only the most beautiful of all its author's sonnets, but one of the most beautiful in the language. It was written when Rossetti was only twenty-one, and first appeared in that now very scarce publication, The Germ, in 1850. There is no doubt but that the generally known version is the finer, but the original is also so beautiful (notwithstanding such rhymes as "widening" and "in") that I may give it here :— Water, for anguish of the solstice,-yea Listlessly dipt to let the water in With slow vague gurgle. Blue, and deep away Now the hand trails upon the viol-string, That sobs; and the brown faces cease to sing, Say nothing now unto her lest she weep, Life touching lips with Immortality. |