Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume VII. Descriptive: Narrative. 1904. | | | | Descriptive Poems: I. Personal: Great Writers | | The Sonnet | | William Wordsworth (1770–1850) |
| | | 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 wound; | |
| A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound; | 5 |
| With it Camoëns soothed an exile’s 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 fairy-land | 10 |
| 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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