Books, He Replied - They
Had Been Left As Of No Value When The House Was Cleared Of
Furniture.
As I wished to see the books he undid the parcel;
it contained forty copies of a small quarto-shaped book of
sonnets, with the late squire's name as author on the title
page.
I read a sonnet, and told him I should like to read
them all. "You can have a copy, of course," he exclaimed.
"Put it in your pocket and keep it." When I asked him if he
had any right to give one away he laughed and said that if any
one had thought the whole parcel worth twopence it would not
have been left behind. He was quite right; a cracked dinner
- plate or a saucepan with a hole in it or an earthenware
teapot with a broken spout would not have been left, but the
line was drawn at a book of sonnets by the late squire.
Nobody wanted it, and so without more qualms I put it in my
pocket, and have it before me now, opened at page 63, on which
appears, without a headline, the sonnet I first read, and
which I quote: -
How beautiful are birds, of God's sweet air
Free denizens; no ugly earthly spot
Their boundless happiness doth seem to blot.
The swallow, swiftly flying here and there,
Can it be true that dreary household care
Doth goad her to incessant flight?
If not How can it be that she doth cast her lot
Now there, now here, pursuing summer everywhere?
I sadly fear that shallow, tiny brain
Is not exempt from anxious cares and fears,
That mingled heritage of joy and pain
That for some reason everywhere appears;
And yet those birds, how beautiful they are!
Sure beauty is to happiness no bar.
This has a fault that doth offend the reader of modern verse,
and there are many of the eighty sonnets in the book which do
not equal it in merit. He was manifestly an amateur; he
sometimes writes with labour, and he not infrequently ends
with the unpardonable weak line. Nevertheless he had rightly
chosen this difficult form in which to express his inner self.
It suited his grave, concentrated thought, and each little
imperfect poem of fourteen lines gives us a glimpse into a
wise, beneficent mind. He had fought his fight and suffered
defeat, and had then withdrawn himself silently from the field
to die. But if he had been embittered he could have relieved
himself in this little book. There is no trace of such a
feeling. He only asks, in one sonnet, where can a balm be
found for the heart fretted and torn with eternal cares; when
we have thought and striven for some great and good purpose,
when all our striving has ended in disaster? His plan, he
concludes, is to go out in the quiet night-time and look at
the stars.
Here let me quote two more sonnets written in contemplative
mood, just to give the reader a fuller idea not of the verse,
as verse, but of the spirit in the old squire.
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