Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/657

 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 547 The Sonnet (*')

NUNS fret not at their convent's narrow room, And hermits are contented with their cells, And students with their pensive citadels; Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom, Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom, High as the highest peak of Furness fells, Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells In truth the prison unto which we doom Ourselves no prison is and hence for me, In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground; Pleaded if some souls (for such there needs must be) Who have felt the weight of too much liberty, Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

548 (o

SCORN not the Sonnet, Critic, you have frown'd, Mindless of its just honours, with this key

Shakespeare unlock'd his heart; the melody Qf this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound , A thousand times this pipe did Tasbo sound;

With it Camoens sooth'd an exile's grief,

The Sonnet glitter'd a gay myrtle leaf Amid the cypress with which Dante crown'd His visionary brow, a glow-worm lamp,

It cheer'd mild Spenser, call'd from Faery-land 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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