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Lovers' LamentsRenaissance sonnets and the art of passionate excess.

By Robert PinskyPosted Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009, at 6:52 AM ET

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Philip Sidney (1554-86), who started the sonnet vogue without intending to, has a gentler, less violent style in his exquisite sonnet addressed to the moon:

XXXI. "With How Sad Steps"
With how sad steps, Oh Moon, thou climb'st the skies,
How silently, and with how wan a face!
What, may it be that even in heavenly place
That busy archer his sharp arrows tries?
Sure, if that long‑with‑love‑acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feels't a lover's case;
I read it in thy looks, thy languished grace,
To me that feel the like, thy state decries,
Then even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me
Is constant love deemed there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be loved, and yet
***Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?
***Do they call virtue there ungratefulness?

The extreme, blatant artificiality of the lover's extravagance seems to be part of the pleasure these poems express or seek. How preposterously, amusingly far one can go in speaking to the moon or finding a new metaphor? A highway, for instance:

Sonnet LXXXIV. "Highway, Since You"
Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be,
And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet,
Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet
More oft than to a chamber melody;
Now, blessed you, bear onward blessed me
To her, where I my heart safe left shall meet;
My Muse and I must you of duty greet
With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully.
Be you still fair, honoured by public heed,
By no encroachment wronged, nor time forgot,
Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed;
And that you know I envy you no lot
***Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss:
***Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss.

It's high time to introduce a poem by a woman. Lady Mary Wortley Montague (1689-1762) wrote a century after the sonnet vogue. Yet like Sidney, she composed a sonnet to the moon—with an interesting difference of tone, more sympathetic to the "coldness" of the virginal and "serenely sweet" moon:

"A Hymn to the Moon"
Thou silver deity of secret night,
***Direct my footsteps through the woodland shade;
Thou conscious witness of unknown delight,
***The Lover's guardian, and the Muse's aid!
By thy pale beams I solitary rove,
***To thee my tender grief confide;
Serenely sweet you gild the silent grove,
***My friend, my goddess, and my guide.
E'en thee, fair queen, from thy amazing height,
***The charms of young Endymion drew;
Veil'd with the mantle of concealing night;
***With all thy greatness and thy coldness too.

This attractive coldness is defined in a more personal way by Montague's extraordinary poem "The Lover." Defining a less artificial, unexaggerated ideal of love, she contrasts it with the "vain affectation of wit"—a phrase that seems to allude directly, and pointedly, to the excesses of the male sonnet tradition—in the closing stanzas:

But when the long hours of public are past,
And we meet with champagne and a chicken at last,
May every fond pleasure that moment endear;
Be banish'd afar both discretion and fear!
Forgetting or scorning the airs of the crowd,
He may cease to be formal, and I to be proud,
Till lost in the joy, we confess that we live,
And he may be rude, and yet I may forgive.
And that my delight may be solidly fix'd,
Let the friend and the lover be handsomely mix'd;
In whose tender bosom my soul may confide,
Whose kindness can soothe me, whose counsel can guide.
From such a dear lover as I here describe,
No danger should fright me, no millions should bribe;
But till this astonishing creature I know,
As I long have liv'd chaste, I will keep myself so.
I never will share with the wanton coquette,
Or be caught by a vain affectation of wit.
The toasters and songsters may try all their art,
But never shall enter the pass of my heart.
I loathe the lewd rake, the dress'd fopling despise:
Before such pursuers the nice virgin flies;
And as Ovid has sweetly in parable told,
We harden like trees, and like rivers grow cold.

After reading a lot of sonnets of the period (even great ones), there is a refreshing appeal to this loathing of the "lewd rake." Montague's vision of mutual kindness over "champagne and chicken" is charming partly because it is realistic.

Another woman poet—Queen Elizabeth I, though some scholars doubt her authorship—lived during the sonnet vogue. She seems to speak from the viewpoint of a woman weary of being wooed as in the sonnets of male lovers—but then later in life regrets the loss of those amorous complainers and their inventions. Cupid punishes her with age:

When I was fair and young then favour graced me.
Of many was I sought their mistress for to be.
But I did scorn them all, and answered them therefore:
Go, go, go, seek some otherwhere,
Importune me no more.
How many weeping eyes I made to pine in woe,
How many sighing hearts I have no skill to show,
Yet I the prouder grew, and answered them therefore:
Go, go, go, seek some otherwhere,
Importune me no more.
Then spake fair Venus' son, that proud victorious boy,
And said, you dainty dame, since that you be so coy,
I will so pluck your plumes that you shall say no more:
Go, go, go, seek some otherwhere,
Importune me no more.
When he had spake these words such change grew in my breast
That neither night nor day I could take any rest.
Then, lo! I did repent, that I had said before
Go, go, go, seek some otherwhere,
Importune me no more.

The sonnet fad proliferated and spread like kudzu, leading Sir John Davies (1569‑1626) to compose a sequence of parodies he called "Gulling Sonnets"—mocking the elaborate metaphors and exaggerated suffering, the stylized cruel lady and importunate writer. Davies' parodies are amusing, but it is not always easy to tell them from the actual sonnets that are their target. After all, the sonneteer, smirking as he says he is dying, conventionally incorporates an element of parody into his poems.

In honor of that playful element of the sonnet vogue, I will close with a game. Some of the unidentified poems below are from Davies' "Gulling Sonnets." Others are actual, nongulling examples of the form, taken from contemporaneous sequences by great and well-known poets. As you read along, see whether you can pick out who wrote what. (Answers are here.)