RPO -- William Wordsworth : Scorn not the Sonnet

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Scorn not the Sonnet

1Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,

2Mindless of its just honours; with this key

3Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody

4Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;

5A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;

6With it Camöens soothed an exile's grief;

7The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf

8Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned

9His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,

10It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land

11To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp

12Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand

13The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew

14Soul-animating strains--alas, too few!

Notes

4] Petrarch: the earliest of the great Italian poets (1304-1374); his sonnets deal with his unrequited passion for Laura.

5] Tasso: Italian poet (1544-95), author of La Gerusalemme Liberata.

6] Camöens: Portuguese poet banished to a settlement in China in 1556.

8] Dante: greatest of Italian poets (1265-1321). His Divine Comedy gives a vision of the other world; his sonnets present the lighter aspect of his poetry.

11] damp: mist; referring to his blindness, and carrying associations with the sonnet on that subject. Or perhaps, depression of spirit; cf. Paradise Lost, IX, 44-46: "unless an age too late, or cold/Climate, or years damp my intended wing/Deprest."

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: William Wordsworth, Poetical Works (London: Longman, 1827). B-11 0716 1-5 Fisher Rare Book Library (Toronto).
First publication date: 1827
RPO poem editor: J. R. MacGillivray
RP edition: 3RP 2.399.
Recent editing: 2:2002/3/20

Form: sonnet
Rhyme: abbaaccadedeff

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