Sonnets From Dante to the Present

by HOLLANDER, JOHN

• ISBN13: 9780375411779
• ISBN10: 0375411771
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-03-27
• Publisher: Everyman's Library

Summary

"A sonnet is a moment's monument," said Dante Gabriel Rossetti in a sonnet about sonnets. The sonnets in this collectionwhether they capture moments of perception, recognition, despair, or celebrationreveal how great an amount of feeling, insight, and experience can be concentrated into a mere fourteen lines. Here are classics such as Milton's "On His Blindness," Yeats's "Leda and the Swan," and Frost's "The Oven Bird," juxtaposed with the mischievous wit of Rupert Brooke's "Sonnet Reversed," the lyric defiance of Mona Van Duyn's "Caring for Surfaces," and the comic poignancy of Philip Larkin's "To Failure." From the lovelorn laments of Dante and Petrarch to the artful heights of Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare, from the masterpieces of Wordsworth and Keats to the innovations of Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens, and James Merrill, the sonnet has proved both versatile and enduring. This delightful anthology displays the incredible range and power of the verse form that has inspired poets across the centuries.

Author Biography

John Hollander is the author of seventeen previous books of poetry. His first, A Crackling of Thorns, was chosen by W. H. Auden as the 1958 volume in the Yale Series of Younger Poets. He has written eight books of criticism, including the award-winning Rhyme’s Reason: A Guide to English Verse and The Work of Poetry, and edited or coedited twenty-two collections, among them The Oxford Anthology of English Literature, American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, and (with Anthony Hecht, with whom he shared the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1983) Jiggery-Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls.

Mr. Hollander attended Columbia and Indiana Universities and was a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows of Harvard University. He has taught at Connecticut College and Yale, and was a professor of English at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. He is currently Sterling Professor emeritus of English at Yale. In 1990 he received a MacArthur Fellowship .

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. 17
He Compares All Things with His Lady, and Finds Them Wanting	p. 23
A Rapture Concerning His Lady	p. 24
Broken Thougths	p. 25
May	p. 26
June	p. 27
Sonnet 88 Used as Troilus' Complaint	p. 28
Love the Tyrant	p. 29
A Night Piece	p. 30
To Giovanni da Pistoja: On the Painting of the Sistine Chapel	p. 31
To Vittoria Colonna: The Model and the Statue	p. 32
The Impeachment of Night	p. 33
Winged Thoughts	p. 34
The Portrait of a Lady	p. 35
Farewell to Love	p. 36
Hands Off?	p. 37
Spring, But	p. 38
Under House Arrest in Windsor	p. 39
Cassandra's Beauty	p. 40
Life's Roses	p. 41
Love's Wounding	p. 42
Home	p. 43
Ruined Rome	p. 44
Closing Day	p. 45
Her World	p. 46
Her Jewels	p. 47
Visions of the Absent	p. 48
Cats	p. 49
... And More Cats	p. 50
Paradoxes	p. 51
Restoring Life	p. 52
Loves of the Stars	p. 53
Burning Together	p. 54
Pride of the Fourth and Liquid Element	p. 55
Dressing Cupid	p. 56
Water Never the Same	p. 57
Astrophel Would Write of Stella	p. 58
Hit by Love	p. 59
Poetry's Source	p. 60
Yes, But	p. 61
Asking the Moon About Love	p. 62
This Nothing Seen	p. 63
Benighted	p. 64
A Hard Audience	p. 65
Doing and Undoing	p. 66
Her Portrait	p. 67
Eternizing Her	p. 68
Repaying a Debt	p. 69
Care-charmer Sleep	p. 70
He Can Write Only of Her	p. 71
Timeliness	p. 72
My Smithy	p. 73
Love's Farewell	p. 74
A Sonnet to the Noble Lady, the Lady Mary Wroth	p. 75
The World	p. 76
Rescuing Cupid	p. 77
Thinking of Love	p. 78
Sonnet No. 30	p. 79
Sonnet No. 53	p. 80
Sonnet No. 73	p. 81
Sonnet No. 94	p. 82
Sonnet No. 106	p. 83
Sonnet No. 107	p. 84
Sonnet No. 116	p. 85
Sonnet No. 121	p. 86
Sonnet No. 129	p. 87
Sonnet No. 138	p. 88
Sonnet No. 146	p. 89
Sonnet to Black It Self	p. 90
Jubilate Deo	p. 91
Alpha and Omega	p. 92
Microcosm	p. 93
Death Rebuked	p. 94
The Soul to Her Rescuer	p. 95
A Sonnet Sent Home from College	p. 96
Prayer	p. 97
Redemption	p. 98
The Dream	p. 99
Clocks of Wheels, of Sand and of Sun	p. 100
On Reaching Age 23	p. 101
On His Blindness	p. 102
On the Late Massacre in Piedmont	p. 103
A Dream of a Dead Wife	p. 104
To Mr. Henry Lawes, on His Airs	p. 105
On Hope	p. 106
To Her Self-Portrait	p. 107
Sonnet on a Family Picture	p. 108
Sonnet on the Death of Mr. Richard West	p. 109
Written at Stonehenge	p. 110
Sonnet to William Wilberforce, Esquire	p. 111
Emblem, Alas!	p. 112
To the Insect of the Gossamer	p. 113
To the Evening Star	p. 114
To the Sun-Dial	p. 115
At Dover Cliffs, July 20, 1787	p. 116
Netley Abbey	p. 117
To Oxford	p. 118
Composed Upon the Beach near Calais, August, 1802	p. 119
Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September, 3, 1802	p. 120
Mutability	p. 121
The World is too Much with Us	p. 122
Steamboats, Viaducts and Railways	p. 123
The the River Duddon	p. 124
To the River Otter	p. 125
The Bosses of Rome	p. 126
On the Group of the Three Angels Before the Tent of Abraham, by Raffaelle, in the Vatican	p. 127
The the Mocking-Bird	p. 128
The Nile	p. 129
To the Grasshopper and the Cricket	p. 130
On the Grasshopper and Cricket	p. 131
The Human Seasons	p. 132
What the Thrush Seemed to Say	p. 133
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer	p. 134
Bright Star	p. 135
Fears That I May Cease to Be	p. 136
Ozymandias	p. 137
England in 1819	p. 138
Winter Walk	p. 139
Gipsies	p. 140
To A. W. von Schlegel	p. 141
A Lock of Hair	p. 142
To an American Painter Departing for Europe	p. 143
Silence	p. 144
To Tartar, a Terrier Beauty	p. 145
By the Swanannoa	p. 146
Hiram Powers' Greek Slave'	p. 147
El Desdichado	p. 148
To Science	p. 149
Silence	p. 150
Old Ruralities	p. 151
Shadows Off the Coast	p. 152
A Nasty Sonnet	p. 153
The Later Rain	p. 154
The Photograph	p. 155
Mezzo Cammin	p. 156
The Harvest Moon	p. 157
The Cross of Snow	p. 158
Night	p. 159
Failure	p. 160
Correspondences	p. 161
The Owls	p. 162
West London	p. 163
A Forgery	p. 164
In His Garden	p. 165
The House Stands Vacant	p. 166
A Match with the Moon	p. 167
On the Road to Waterloo: 17 October	p. 168
Barren Spring	p. 169
Silent Noon	p. 170
Body's Beauty	p. 171
Remember	p. 172
From Sunset to Star Rise	p. 173
In an Artist's Studio	p. 174
From Modern Love	p. 175
Lucifer in Starlight	p. 176
October	p. 177
Crossed Threads	p. 178
Hap	p. 179
In the Cemetery	p. 180
The Sea and the Skylark	p. 181
The Windhover	p. 182
No Worst	p. 182
The Tomb of Poe	p. 184
Lead	p. 185
Night Scene	p. 186
1492	p. 187
The New Colossus	p. 188
Long Island Sound	p. 189
Vowels	p. 190
Impressions de Voyage	p. 191
April in Town	p. 192
The Lights of London	p. 193
On a Piece of Tapestry	p. 194
Accident in Art	p. 195
Leda and the Swan	p. 196
The Trevi Foundatain, Rome	p. 197
Sunium	p. 198
Mount Lykaion	p. 199
Near Helikon	p. 200
The Pity of the Leaves	p. 201
Reuben Bright	p. 202
Verlaine	p. 203
How Annandale Went Out	p. 204
The Sheaves	p. 205
White Cats	p. 206
Never Again Would Birds' Song Be the Same	p. 207
The Oven Bird	p. 208
The Silken Tent	p. 209
Putting in the Seed	p. 210
Design	p. 211
Archaic Torso of Apollo	p. 212
Unicorn	p. 213
February Afternoon	p. 214
Autumn Refrain	p. 215
Self-Portrait	p. 216
Sonnet Reversed	p. 217
The Soldier	p. 218
Piazza Piece	p. 219
Compass	p. 220
The Lynching	p. 221
Anthem for Doomed Youth	p. 222
Bluebeard	p. 223
The Poet Talks on the Phone with His Love	p. 224
Apollo and Daphne	p. 225
From the Dark Tower	p. 226
The Novelist	p. 227
Luther	p. 228
Paradise Saved	p. 229
Sonnet	p. 230
Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed	p. 231
Caring for Surfaces	p. 232
O	p. 233
To Failure	p. 234
Naming the Animals	p. 235
At Night	p. 236
A Sonnet	p. 237
From The Broken Home	p. 238
High Fidelity	p. 240
A Theory of Waves	p. 241
Requiem for the Plantagenet Kings	p. 242
From Kilim	p. 243
Its Origin	p. 247
Its Length	p. 248
Its Enclosure	p. 249
Its History	p. 250
Its Constraints	p. 251
Its Functions	p. 252
Acknowledgments	p. 253
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Sonnet #116

William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments: love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Oh no! It is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.


 
October

Helen Hunt Jackson

Bending above the spicy woods which blaze,
Arch skies so blue they flash, and hold the sun
Immeasurably far; the waters run
Too slow, so freighted are the river-ways
With gold of elms and birches from the maze
Of forests. Chestnuts, clicking one by one,
Escape from satin burs; her fringes done,
The gentian spreads them out in sunny days,
And, like late revelers at dawn, the chance
Of one sweet, mad, last hour, all things assail,
And conquering, flush and spin; while, to enhance
The spell, by sunset door, wrapped in a veil
Of red and purple mists, the summer, pale,
Steals back alone for one more song and dance.

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Excerpted from Sonnets: From Dante to the Present
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.