"Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room"

I am going to write a sonnet. And it will probably be a bad one. I will not imagine it to be more than bad. I will content myself write in order to get a handle on the form: fourteen lines of ten iambic syllables (unaccented, accented) with some kind of rhyme scheme. And even if it is bad poetry, I will still count it a success.

Here is Wordsworth writing on the sonnet in sonnet form. And his is genius. Pure genius.

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, into 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;
Pleased 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.

Comments

Elisabeth said…
I'd not seen this one before - it's beautiful! Do you remember Madeline L'Engle using the sonnet as an analogy in Wrinkle in Time? Brilliant!

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