Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles | Page 3

waters,?Shall have my song, where Delia hath her seat."
The Wiltshire Avon is the proud brook that flows southward by Wilton, "where Delia hath her seat." If it may seem in any degree unfitting that Daniel should address language so glowing as is found in the _Delia_ sonnets to a lady who is established as the head of a household with husband and sons about her, attention may be called to the fact that the sonnets, though they are characterised by warmth of feeling and extravagance of expression, do not contain one tainted line. Posterity must justify what Daniel in proud humility said of himself:
"I . . . . . . .?. . . never had my harmless pen at all?Distained with any loose immodesty,?But still have done the fairest offices?To virtue and the time."
The respectful dignity of Daniel's prose dedication of _Delia_ to Mary Sidney cannot be surpassed; and the introductory sonnet that displaces it in the next edition, while confessing the ardent devotion of the writer, is yet couched in the most reverent terms. Daniel and other sonneteers had the great example of Petrarch in honouring a lady with admiration and love expressed in verses whose warmth might perhaps not have been so excusable, could the poet have been taken at his word. The new sonnets inserted in the editions of 1601 and 1623 show the faithfulness of the poet's homage. A loyal friendship, whether formed upon gratitude only or upon some warmer feeling, inspired the _Delia_ although the poet expresses his devotion in the conventional modes. But that Daniel outgrew to some extent the taste for these fanciful devices is shown by the changes he made in successive editions. Four sonnets from the 1591 edition were never reprinted, another was reprinted once and afterwards omitted. In our text the order of the 1623 edition is followed, the edition that was supervised by the poet's brother; but these omitted sonnets will be found at the end under the head of _Rejected Sonnets_. It is certain that they are Daniel's and that he rejected them, and it therefore seems no more than fair to the poet, if they are reprinted at all, to insert them under this head.
While, then, these rejected sonnets may have been in two cases omitted by the poet because of their too great frankness of expression, in other cases, notably in the phoenix, the wax-image, the tablet-and-siren, the vanquished fort, and the ermelin sonnets, they seem to have lost their charm, not so much for any personal reason as for the artistic defect in the far-fetched nature of the device.
Daniel lived till 1619, experiencing the usual ups and downs in the career of a "Court-dear poet." In later years, the famous Lady Anne Clifford, wife of Mary Sidney's younger son, caused a monument to be erected in his honour, in the inscription upon which she recorded her pride in the fact that he had once been her tutor.
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
THE LADY MARY
COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE
Wonder of these, glory of other times,?O thou whom envy ev'n is forced t'admire!?Great Patroness of these my humble rhymes,?Which thou from out thy greatness dost inspire!?Since only thou has deigned to raise them higher,?Vouchsafe now to accept them as thine own,?Begotten by thy hand and my desire,?Wherein my zeal and thy great might is shown.?And seeing this unto the world is known,?O leave not still to grace thy work in me;?Let not the quickening seed be overthrown?Of that which may be born to honor thee,?Whereof the travail I may challenge mine,?But yet the glory, Madam, must be thine!
TO DELIA
I
Unto the boundless ocean of thy beauty?Runs this poor river, charged with streams of zeal,?Returning thee the tribute of my duty,?Which here my love, my youth, my plaints reveal.?Here I unclasp the book of my charged soul,?Where I have cast th' accounts of all my care;?Here have I summed my sighs. Here I enrol?How they were spent for thee. Look, what they are.?Look on the dear expenses of my youth,?And see how just I reckon with thine eyes.?Examine well thy beauty with my truth,?And cross my cares ere greater sums arise.?Read it, sweet maid, though it be done but slightly;?Who can show all his love, doth love but lightly.
II
Go, wailing verse, the infants of my love,?Minerva-like, brought forth without a mother;?Present the image of the cares I prove,?Witness your father's grief exceeds all other.?Sigh out a story of her cruel deeds,?With interrupted accents of despair;?A monument that whosoever reads,?May justly praise and blame my loveless Fair;?Say her disdain hath drièd up my blood,?And starvèd you, in succours still denying;?Press to her eyes, importune me some good,?Waken her sleeping pity with your crying:?Knock at her hard heart, beg till you have moved her,?And tell th'unkind how dearly I have loved her.
III
If so it hap