in one of his sonnets on the "Divina Commedia” of Dante:

Oft have I seen at some cathedral door

A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er;
Far off the noises of the world retreat;
The loud vociferations of the street
Become an undistinguishable roar.
So, as I enter here from day to day,

And leave my burden at this minster gate,
Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
The tumult of the time disconsolate

To inarticulate murmurs dies away,

While the eternal ages watch and wait.

This is noble in tone and lofty in its simple imagery. There is special felicity in the richness imparted to the versification by the polysyllables in the second half. But, if a blemish must be sought, it can be found in the use of the same vowel-sound in both of the rimes of the sestet. The long a in gate, disconsolate and wait reappears in day, pray and away; and this is not entirely pleasing to the ear, — if, indeed, it is not even a little confusing.

The rigorous limitation to fourteen lines of prescribed and equal length, the restriction of the rimes to four or five as the case may be, the intricate arrangement of these rimes according to the Petrarchan pattern, and the avoiding of the terminal couplet, — all these requirements unite to make the sonnet seem like a difficult form. And yet this very difficulty may be an advantage. Every true artist finds his profit in a resolute grapple with technical obstacles, a struggle which forces him to take the utmost pains and to put

forth his topmost strength; and he gets keen pleasure out of this tussle with his material and with his form. The very limitation of the rimes of the sonnet may be suggestive and sustaining; and the poet can attain ultimate freedom within strict bounds.

That the sonnet is not so difficult as it may seem at first sight is proved by the multitude of English sonnets which rise to a fairly satisfactory level of technical merit. Few of the major poets of our language have failed absolutely in this form. On the other hand, only a few even of the greater lyrists have attained to high distinction as sonneteers, because the sonnet at its best demands a union of imaginative inspiration, of moral aspiration, and of technical accomplishment which is very rarely achieved. And a poor sonnet is a very poor thing, indeed. As a French critic once wittily asserted, "nothing is longer than a sonnet when there is nothing in it."

Although the sonnet is best fitted for the expression of a single thought or a single emotion complete in itself, ample for the form and yet not too abundant for its limited framework, certain poets have chosen to use it almost as if it were only a stanza. They have composed a succession of sonnets on a central theme, each devoted to a single aspect of this. These sonnetsequences, as they are termed, were particularly popular with the Elizabethans; and they have been attractive also to certain of the Victorians, especially to Rossetti and Mrs. Browning. And yet the sonnetsequence seems to be rather contradictory, since the unique characteristic of the sonnet is that it must be the perfect expression of a single and simple thought or mood. To treat the sonnet merely as though it was

a stanza is to forego this special quality, without any compensating advantage. It is to adventure on the quest for a necklace of flawless and priceless pearls, all of equal size and of equal value.

CHAPTER VIII

OTHER FIXED FORMS

The six most important of the poetic creations of old France, the rondel, the rondeau, the triolet, the villanelle, the ballade, and the chant-royal.... Each has a fixed form, regulated by traditional laws, and each depends upon richness of rime and delicate workmanship for its successful exercise. The first three are habitually used for joyous or gay thought, and lie most within the province of jeu d'esprit and epigram; the last three are usually wedded to serious or stately expression, and almost demand a vein of pathos.- EDMUND GOSSE: A Plea for Certain Exotic Forms of Verse.

THE sonnet is the noblest of all fixed forms, with a special function of its own. The quatrain is inferior to the sonnet, if only by reason of its brevity; but it can serve on occasion even for imagination, although it seems better suited to fancy or to wit. There is also a five-line stanza of wide popularity which confines itself within the lower realm of playful humor, often deriving a large proportion of its effect from the inventive unexpectedness of its double and treble rimes. This is the form which has won wide recognition under the curious title of the "limerick." It is anapestic in rhythm, with its first, second and fifth lines trimeter, and its third and fourth dimeter. Sometimes the rimes are single throughout, as in this:

There was a young lady from Lynn,
Who was so excessively thin

That when she essayed

To drink lemonade

She slipped through the straw and fell in.

Sometimes the thrice-repeated/rime of the trimeter lines is double, as in this:

There was once an ichthyosaurus,

Who lived when the earth was all porous;

But he fainted with shame

When he first heard his name,

And departed a great while before us.

And sometimes these longer lines have a triple rime which affords abundant scope for the devising of unlooked-for collocations, as in this :

Do you know the young ladies of Birmingham,
And the terrible scandal concerning 'em?-
How they took their hat-pins

And scratched at the shins

Of the bishop while he was confirming 'em?

This last specimen illustrates the special opportunity of the limerick, the reward it pays to the fertile rimester. Full advantage is not taken of the form when the fifth line merely repeats the terminal word of the first, as in this :

-:

But we don't call this cold in Quebec."

In view of its widespread popularity wherever the English language is spoken, there is no denying that the limerick is a definite fixed form.

The humble limerick has the distinction of being the only fixed form which is actually indigenous to English. The sonnet is a transplanted exotic which has long been acclimatized in our language. And the quatrain, which was cultivated in both Greek and