BS: In every thread someone has to be last!

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 22 Jan 14 - 11:52 AM

Sonnet 04/11/07                                  MLXVI

In midnight dream her bright smile haunts me still,
Though daylight shows no trace. Can dream survive
The ghost of heart's desire? Her words yet fill
Corners of mind: Can ghost future revive?
I'll not forget the dreams she gave, nor lose
Vision given: Can I heart's light recall
Without thinking of her? Soul does not choose
To forget: Loss of past would cost me all.
Yet, heart has not hold upon muse: She gives
What she might, and no more. Should I now plead
For what she does not wish? Only dream lives
Future desired: Hope does not fill my need.
Even ghost gives me reason to rejoice:
Heart does not allow any other choice.

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Jan 14 - 01:04 PM

Fine sonneteer. But how any more related to challenge implied by thread-title than the ultra-laconic posts of mine which BB denounced as unacceptable?

I think we should be told!

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 22 Jan 14 - 04:11 PM

Any posts to this thread are an invitation for me to post more sonnets. Just read back through the whole thread….


Sonnet 03/11/07                                  MLXV

To absent friends and lost loves let us drink,
Recalling smiles and times that all once shared.
On those no longer near let us now think,
To bring back reasons that for them we cared.
Some are not here, yet still remain, within
The songs and words they left behind. And some
Are in our souls, when hopes or dreams begin:
A part of what each of us have become.
To those apart let us now raise a glass
And take a moment to give thanks for all
That we from others have ourselves received.
The world's a school, and our lives just a class
In playing well with others. Can we call
It more? Are we by our egos deceived?

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Jan 14 - 05:42 PM

No

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Jan 14 - 07:37 AM

Sonnet 07/07/07                                  MLXIV

This muse's moon gives evening silver light,
But dream cannot see other than the past.
How can I find a source of verse so bright
As thought of her? Does only darkness last?
Dawn does not offer hope: Each day remains
Without a muse's fire. How can heart find
Echo of beauty, when dream's darkness stains
The memory of times I was not blind?
Eyes open, but see nothing: Sight is gray,
When noon light should show all of life's real shades.
What can I do, to remove tears, but pray
To find true muse before all of hope fades?
Time does not alter that I care, nor change
The hope muse might one day these dreams arrange.

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: Musket
Date: 23 Jan 14 - 09:51 AM

Ok my turn.

Shall I compare thee to a second hand dartboard?
Thou certainly doesn't sweat much for a fat lass.
If they were small enough to be buds I may
Enjoy, but need ropes and crampons to navigate them.

My hypocrisy and misogyny I give to thee
To berate me, twice a day.
I get laddish cos I was told it works
By a bloke for whom it doesn't, it seems.




Dead easy this sonnet lark.

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Jan 14 - 10:07 AM

Sorry, THAT was not a sonnet by any standard.

14 lines, rhymed iambic pentameter to qualify. Various rhyme schemes are allowable, and hexameter ( alexandrines) have been permitted in the past.


Sonnet 13/07/06                                  MLXIII

Does love for muse require that one weep
When moon recalls past dreams, or stars remind
About her eyes? Can true desire sleep,
When night gives dream the power to heart bind?
She gives no sign she wants what I might send,
Nor does she share her dreams, to feed my own.
Yet, even silence cannot longings end
When I think of past inspiration shown.
Should I admit concern, or think to hide
That she still matters to my heart? I know
I should not hope nor dream to her confide,
But thoughts of her always my caring show.
It does not matter what I say, or feel:
Without her, how can any hope be real?

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Jan 14 - 10:10 AM

In the old days a poet used to sweat turning out a sonnet, say. Very difficult form. Exactly 14 lines, all of them hung together with rhyme, rhythm, meter, perfectly. It was too much work for the poet, so blank verse and then free verse came in. And then anarchy. The new poet never bothered to learn how to write a sonnet, or to measure his lines in correct meter and to follow a rhythm system. He dashed off his inspired poem in a matter of a half hour and was surprised when after a few decades of this people stopped reading poetry.



Among the Bad Baboons, by Mack Reynolds
Copyright 1968 Galaxy Publishing Corp.

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Jan 14 - 10:30 AM

sonnet
Fixed verse form having 14 lines that are typically five-foot iambics rhyming according to a prescribed scheme. The sonnet is unique among poetic forms in Western literature in that it has retained its appeal for major poets for five centuries. It seems to have originated in the 13th century among the Sicilian school of court poets. In the 14th century Petrarch established the most widely used sonnet form. The Petrarchan (or Italian) sonnet characteristically consists of an eight-line octave, rhyming abbaabba, that states a problem, asks a question, or expresses an emotional tension, followed by a six-line sestet, of varying rhyme schemes, that resolves the problem, answers the question, or resolves the tension. In adapting the Italian form, Elizabethan poets gradually developed the other major sonnet form, the Shakespearean (or English) sonnet. It consists of three quatrains, each with an independent rhyme scheme, and ends with a rhymed couplet.


Calling your "poem" a sonnet would be like calling a tin can banjo a piano.

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Jan 14 - 11:01 AM

I intended an ode
But it turned to a sonnet
It began à la mode
I intended an ode
But Rose crossed the road
In her latest new bonnet
I intended an ode
But it turned to a sonnet

by Henry Austin Dobson. b. 1840

A perfect example, not of a sonnet, but of a triolet. I once managed a series of folk-themed triolets for Folk Review, & even one villanelle, which is a difficult form -- all this following on from folk limerick & clerihew competitions that Fred set & I won.   But I have never managed a satisfactory sonnet; and am full of envy.

Bravo Bruce.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Jan 14 - 11:05 AM

TRIOLET II

                I now have only dreams to hold at night,
                Yet they, too, soon must pass, and leave me blind:
                Without you near to me, to memories light,
                I now have only dreams to hold at night.
                If I could only touch you, hold the sight
                Of your soft eyes, I would not tonight mind:
                I now have only dreams to hold at night,
                Yet they, too soon, must pass, and leave me blind.


                                                                16/3/77

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Jan 14 - 11:07 AM

Villanelles ARE tough…


VILLANNELLE


                I do not have the heart to this love lend,
                For what would be a moment: not, to fade,
                For even you, my distant green-eyed friend.

                I am too set upon my ways to bend,
                Even to save my soul. I am afraid
                I do not have the heart to this love lend.

                There is something wrong, that I must defend
                The reasons I am so, my dreams unplayed,
                For even you, my distant green-eyed friend.

                When we first met, then I did not intend
                To sink so deep into your eyes of jade:
                I do not have the heart to this love lend.

                I do not now desire to this love rend
                To shreds of dream, but will not soul abrade
                For even you, my distant green-eyed friend.

                The time is past that you might comprehend,
                But I must still try, as then, to persuade:
                I do not have the heart to this love lend
                For even you, my distant green-eyed friend.

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Jan 14 - 11:09 AM

but chinquapins are a LOT more fun to write...



Cinquain X

                My love,
                I still can smell
                Strawberry scented hair
                Even after you have left me
                To dream.

                                                13 April 77

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Jan 14 - 11:14 AM

but chinquapins are a LOT more fun to write...


CINQUAINS!!!

I claim to be able to WRITE, not type!!!

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Jan 14 - 11:44 AM

Encore bravo

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Jan 14 - 11:49 AM

1061 left to go…


Sonnet 27/06/06                                  MLXII

The memory of dreaming of your eyes
Will have to serve to fulfill my desire:
I cannot ask for hope. Would you advise
That I forget just smile, or life, entire?
Dream of muse seems to be forever part
Of past, and present: Can future ignore
Vision I long to hold? Can you give heart
A reason to not wish to dream restore?
Heart has only a dream, to hope refine:
Should I deny concern that you are well,
Or that I want you happy? Is hope sign
That I will always be under your spell?
If dream of muse is all that I can hold,
Can heart ever have night it is not cold?

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Jan 14 - 12:12 PM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce - PM
Date: 05 May 04 - 04:46 AM

Let me see... How to kill a thread. No dragons and firestone here, so...

I can post a sonnet. If anyone pposts after it, I will take it as encouragement, and post another. THAT should do it! (I have LOTS of sonnets)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Jan 14 - 01:03 PM

Where do you publish, Bruce? Under what name?

Serious ?????s

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Jan 14 - 02:16 PM

A few published in lit magazines. Not much of a market- won a few sonnet contests.

Planning on publishing the ones to one muse ( 293) as soon as xlibris can get their act together and stop trig to sell me extra "sales programs".

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Jan 14 - 03:06 PM

Thank you. All best with the project.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: Musket
Date: 24 Jan 14 - 07:21 AM

Saying my doggerel wasn't a sonnet is like saying Picasso isn't art because it isn't a mirror on a scene.

Rules? I've shit 'em.






Mind you, I wouldn't know a Picasso from a giraffe's arsehole.






I win

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 24 Jan 14 - 09:39 AM

♫♫No you don't! No you don't! No you don't!♫♫

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: Janie
Date: 24 Jan 14 - 02:55 PM

Worth posting just to keep the sonnets coming. Bruce, wish you would let that side of yourself out in your prose elsewhere on Mudcat.

xo

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Jan 14 - 01:10 AM

O610 hrs here --

Good morning all!

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: Janie
Date: 25 Jan 14 - 11:18 PM

And now, good night!

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Jan 14 - 12:30 AM

0530 hrs. hi

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 26 Jan 14 - 01:35 PM

And Sunday afternoon at the Delaware beaches...

More sonnets? I can do that...

Sonnet 23/06/06                                  MLXI

How long will I have even dream of you,
When all I hear is silence? Dare dream seek
For vision of your smile? Hopes are too few
To tell my heart reason you do not speak.
How long will I even for true love seek,
When all desire leads heart to just despair?
Without your smile, dream cannot to heart speak
Of hope, or holding in arms one to care.
How long will I long for what will not be,
Wasting my life looking for future lost?
Is there reason that I cannot break free
To love without my muse, and pay the cost?
Without the dream that thought of you still gives,
How can I think that love in future lives?

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Jan 14 - 06:38 AM

√√√√√√√

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 29 Jan 14 - 12:40 PM

SEVEN?!

Wow!



Thanks. That gets you another one...


Sonnet 18/05/06                                  MLX

Have I a reason now to care, when all
I hear from her is silence? Should I seek
To know of present dreams? Dare my words speak
About hope, or desire? Must my heart fall,
For having found this muse? I cannot call,
Yet need to know that she is well: I hold
To memory of smile. All I have told
Still remains true: Thought of her hopes install.
Dream does not fill need to her present know,
Nor what future might bring. She does not share
Worries, nor verse: How can I concerns show?
Heart aches, wanting to show that I still care,
But without chance or hope that hope might grow.
If only she for past had time to spare.

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 29 Jan 14 - 12:56 PM

"Shave and a Haircut — two bits!"

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: Waddon Pete
Date: 30 Jan 14 - 07:04 AM

Bearded Bruce is certainly a talented poet. Could I respectfully ask for another cheerful sonnet?

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 31 Jan 14 - 04:10 AM

Shave & a haircut: five €

    ♩   ♫    ♪ ♩    ♩    ♩

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 31 Jan 14 - 07:26 AM

My patience is wearing thin
If I have to write a sonnet to win
This bleeding thread.


Did you know? There are conflicting rules as to what makes a sonnet something of that title?

Therefore, my earlier love ode is a sonnet after all.

Musket 1. Bearded Bruce 0.

Michael on the sub bench.

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 31 Jan 14 - 09:04 AM

Shave & a haircut: five ducats

    ♩   ♫    ♪♩      ♩ ♩

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 31 Jan 14 - 02:01 PM

Sorry, Musket. You are wrong- your attempt at a sonnet does not meet any of the criteria.


Cheerfull sonnet? Not sure I have many of those...


Sonnet 08/05/06                                  MLIX

Is this the time to seek an avatar
Of muse, to give what she no longer cares
To offer me? Must heart find some new star
To guide to one who might lend hope repairs?
It hurts to lose her smile and know I'll hold
My muse no further time. Dream cannot keep
The tears from falling: Her silence has told
So much, with nothing. Even my hopes weep.
Yet, should I shadow seek when she is still
Within the reach of dream? She did not tell
That I could not think of her: Has heart will
To dream without hope, still under her spell?
It does not matter: How can heart replace
The one who lights dream with thought of her face?

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 31 Jan 14 - 03:52 PM

Bruce: Agree re ineligibility of Musket's so-called "Sonnet"; it just isn't one -- and he knows perfectly well the necessity for, and usefulness of, accurate & precise categorisation. Only recognised variant from the 14-line form, which subsumes the Petrarchan, Spenserian, Shakespearean, Miltonic &c variants, and others in other languages [esp Italian, the original -- invented by Petrarch -- & French], is Gerard Manley Hopkins's proportionately reduced variant, which he called the 'curtal sonnet' ~~ worth looking up on wikipedia for those interested in the sonnet form.

Your own most accomplished efforts appear to me in the main to vary between the Spenserian & Shakespearean forms.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 04 Feb 14 - 07:32 AM

I actually like sonnet coronas, and have done one sonnet redouble.


Sonnet 28/04/06                                  MLVIII

Is there reason to dream, when dreams are all
Heart can expect to hold? Can dream inspire
Without some hope? Will heart find one to call
Sweet muse, and dearest friend, if dreams desire?
Is there reason to care, when my concern
Appears unwanted? Should I spend my thought
Where I can never hope to my hopes earn,
Though I see in her eyes all I have sought?
Is there reason to live, without the chance
To hold the one heart loves within my arms?
What is purpose, without hope for romance,
Of words, and hopes, and dreams about her charms?
Without reasons, I must still let my heart
Acknowledge that to muse I owe my art.

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 04 Feb 14 - 07:55 AM

You also know that I don't know half of what you just posted.

On a serious note just for one short paragraph. Bruce's work is rather good.

Ok.

Putting rules around it is just a way to badge a form of doggerel.

Mort'Arthur had ten syllables per line. I wrote a song on the same terms and abandoned it on the basis of not easy to put cadences in the melody I had lined up for it.

Moral ?


Anarchy beats rules every time.








You don't need to reply

Either of you.

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 04 Feb 14 - 08:06 AM

But we will-


Probably both of us.


I guess you don't approve of notes being in a scale, either. After all, what does it matter if the interval between them is a full note, or random?

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 04 Feb 14 - 08:28 AM

Badges are useful. So are popguns. So are categories. A pretence of ignorance OTOH is an insufferable affectation.

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 04 Feb 14 - 08:50 AM

Sonnet 28/04/06                                  MLVII

I think about past muse, and heart desires
To know if she is happy. Can I ask,
When she does not reply? I cannot mask
Concern about her, yet my heart requires
Only that she is well: If she still tires
Of all my words, should I beg for reply
She does not wish to send? Must I deny
That I still care for one who dream inspires?
I remain fool, for all my years, to know
Her thought, and still have dreams. Yet, she is still
So beautiful: Can I to that be blind?
I long for words that would my longings show,
Yet not demand even her smile. Dreams fill
The emptiness: Might I cause to hope find?

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 04 Feb 14 - 09:13 AM

MtheGM,

Acually, there were a number of early sonnets ( Wyatt and Surrey) that were 18 lines, but that was dropped by the late Elizabethan period. The tendency was for sonnet sequences, rather than making the sonnets longer.


Sonnet 24/01/02                        DCL

A sonnet is a frozen tear, a kiss,
Preserved in fourteen lines. It is a pearl
Of layered thought, a gem too bright to miss
When set on page: One blossom, to unfurl
To perfect flower. As amber, sealed soul
In timeless tomb, it can show time long past,
Or hold this instant in it's grasp. The whole
Of heart upon one single page, to last
Beyond even our dreams, it seems a sip,
Distilled to essence. Refined within mind,
Lines sing sweet song, and rhymes in patterns slip,
To weave image that leaves mere vision blind.
A single chord, to resound in one's heart:
Echo of past that might our future start.

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 04 Feb 14 - 10:22 AM

My one sonnet redouble.

YES, I DO know it exceeds the page- but a 210 line poem will.





Sonnet Redouble, to Katie Elizabeth


My Lady Muse, how can I reach your heart
And hold to source of dream? You are the cause
Of my desires, a vision that gives start
To words of my emotion. Shall I pause
From caring, when I hear only the wind?
Can dream replace the touch of lips, or line
Hold you as arms desire? Can heart rescind
All feelings, or chance of your love decline?
You are the center of my dreams, the core
That defines structure of desire: You lend
The form, to fill my fantasy, and more,
You offer focus, to emotions bend.
How can I find this hope, that dreams require,
To tell of my concerns, and my desire?

To tell of my concerns, and my desire,
Seems beyond power that mere words contain.
You are one who more than just dreams inspire:
Can my heart's hope more than soft smile obtain?
All vision fades, with distance: Can I see
Beyond my own desires? You are the light
To show image of what dreams hope to be;
The source of brightness that to hope is sight.
Will muse be all I seek, when I reach out
To touch your fire? Can lips not seek to kiss
Your palm, forehead, and neck, and try to scout
Where I might offer pleasure, and earn bliss?
Desire feeds dreams, and passion forms my art:
Can longing be enough to future start?

Can longing be enough to future start
When I have sought for muse too many years?
Having found you, how could I think to part
From vision that guards me from past's cold tears?
Can I hold back from love, when your smiles send
Desire to warm my heart? Shall I not care
If I might please you, or let words pretend
I do not suffer when you sadness share?
Can I be more than poet, to hold muse
Within both arms and thought? Shall verse remain
My goal, or should I deeper passions choose,
When night allows desire to hopes explain?
Though you give light to dream, and verse inspire,
Can dream be all to which I might aspire?
 
Can dream be all to which I might aspire
When vision fills each night, and day? I seek
For happiness: What god would heart require
As tithe to future that only seems bleak?
Can passion be contained, controlled, or bound
By reason and by sense? Can desire burn
Without some warmth, and will my hopes be found
To hold only to dreams mere friendships earn?
Can longing be ignored, and set aside?
Can I not breath, nor feel, nor let mind think?
Would I be able to from my heart hide
All that I hope, and dream, to darkness sink?
Though more than my desire and source of rhyme,
I have no claim upon your heart, or time.

I have no claim upon your heart, or time
To build more fantasy upon your smile.
You embody desire, but can hope mime
Reality, that dream might future style?
You remain goal, beyond heart's hope to reach
Yet too dear to be set aside, or locked
Inside, unsaid. Will dream be brought to teach
Pleasure, or will all hopes by fact be mocked?
All that I hope, I owe to thought of you.
Your smile illuminates my dreams, your eyes
Reach to my soul, and offer heart what few
Have sent: A dream, of love that fate defies.
I offer heart and mind, to pay dream's fee:
Though I may seek for soul, you remain free.

Though I may seek for soul, you remain free
To ask for what you will: I'll not deny
My muse all that I have, nor would I be
Unwilling to all of your desires try.
You guide my dreams, and steer my hopes in ways
That excite my desires: How can I mask
How much I want to hold you? Can dream raise
My hopes enough that I might desires ask?
I do not think you need my love, but know
I require what concern hope might yet send.
My dreams are fragile, formed in heart, and show
More of desires than Truth reasons defend.
Should I think that to seek for love is crime?
Can I ask for a smile, to my dreams prime?
 
Can I ask for a smile, to my dreams prime
With passion? Would my hopes give heart a chance,
Without some sign to show you care, to climb
From depths of dark despair to sweet romance?
I want far more than glance, but know I hold
No key, to chain you to my dreams. Yet, dream
Would wrap arms around you, to warmth enfold:
I cannot deny that in heart I scheme.
I desire chance to show how much I care,
Beyond desire: All dreams center on you.
Shall I offer my heart, or can I dare
To ask if I might your smile try to view?
I know I have no hope to from hope flee:
Can I hope that you'll listen to my plea?

Can I hope that you'll listen to my plea
To give reason for hopes, or make dreams real?
Will thought become true deed, or heart agree
It will in future only pleasures feel?
My hopes, and heart, cannot ignore your eyes,
Nor keep desires to what is within reach.
Yet, should I refuse dream that otherwise
Gives joy? Should I but bitter thoughts beseech?
All reason flees: I chase moonbeams, and seek
For vision seen only within my mind.
What can I say, that would fantasy speak,
That could alter the world, to desire find?
How can I hope deny, or passions fight:
You are my heart's desire, my muse of light.

You are my heart's desire, my muse of light,
Bringing a hope of heaven, and a touch
Of subtle passion to echoes of night.
How can my dreams of you remain as such?
I search your words, for image, and for hint
Of what might make you smile, or how to bend
Your dreams to thought of me. Eyes need no tint
To see what soul desires, to my heart mend.
I see what heart desires, but am I blind,
Looking at light too bright? I do not know
How I might filter out my dreams, or find
If hope is lust, or deeper passion's glow.
You remain muse, that heart can't set aside;
Sweet inspiration of my verse, and guide.
 
Sweet inspiration of my verse, and guide
To realms of dream, and of desire, you bring
Light to my darkness. Can my heart abide
Without some thought of your soft smile seeking?
Dear one, is future preordained, that all
My hopes are less than dust? I dare not hold
To such a faith: I would to heaven call
And ask for dispensation, to dreams mold.
Can vision torn from dream be true, or show
More than my fondest wish? Can my heart care
Less for itself than that you passions know?
How can I dream, when you all my dreams snare?
Without a chance to kiss, or hold you tight,
How can I know if my concern is right?

How can I know if my concern is right
When all I hold are dreams? Can heart discern
What you would have me do? Can words invite
Hope beyond dream, or give heart chance to learn?
How can I hope to offer more than wit,
When I share only words? Can care remain
Within, hidden from life, without a bit
Of dream escaping to my hopes explain?
How can I care so much for one, unseen,
Beyond all hope of passion? Can I hold
My heart from love, when all that hope can glean
From dream is that time does not make one old?
What hope have I to future dream decide,
To tell if words should hope display, or hide?

To tell if words should hope display, or hide
All feelings, heart must find a path to lead
Out of my dreams. Yet, would I turn aside
For fear heart might lose something that I need?
How can I deny dreams, or hope refuse,
When without thought of you my nights are cold?
My dreams bring joy, since I found you, my muse;
How can I let your effect be untold?
I wear heart on my sleeve: You are the maid
I hold as Lady Muse, but should I try
To be more than just friend? Hopes do not fade
With time, but can my heart to sense reply?
Heart seeks to show your colours, and dreams rule:
I do not know if I am knight, or fool.
 
I do not know if I am knight, or fool
To care for you, when I can't hope to reach
Beyond desire. I cannot think you cruel,
Though I might wish far more than rhyme to teach:
You are one I desire, but more, I care
That you are happy, and future enjoy.
What should I do? Can words hope to repair
Your dreams? How can I past demons destroy?
You know I seek to have you laugh, and smile,
Though I might want to hold you, and to kiss
Forehead, and palm, and lips. Might I dream, while
I remain distant? Is concern remiss?
I do not know if I should dream o'errule;
Whether to offer heart, or passions cool.

Whether to offer heart, or passions cool
Remains beyond decision. Dream is all
I have: I cannot desire for you school
Out of my dreams, nor out of longing fall.
Yet, dare I ask to fulfill dreams, or tell
How I might offer passion for your night?
I care too much to risk breaking this spell
You hold me in, that fills my dreams with light.
Reason requires that heart be held in check,
But desires control dreams, and hope. I long
To whisper in your ear, and nibble neck,
But do not know if action would be wrong.
I offer heart, and soul, and all of art:
My Lady Muse, how can I reach your heart?

My Lady Muse, how can I reach your heart
To tell of my concerns, and my desire?
Can longing be enough to future start,
Can dream be all to which I might aspire?
I have no claim upon your heart, or time;
Though I may seek for soul, you remain free.
Can I ask for a smile to my dreams prime?
Can I hope that you'll listen to my plea?
You are my heart's desire, my muse of light,
Sweet inspiration of my verse, and guide.
How can I know if my concern is right,
To tell if words should hope display, or hide?
I do not know if I am knight or fool;
Whether to offer heart, or passions cool.

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 04 Feb 14 - 10:41 AM

"Acually, there were a number of early sonnets ( Wyatt and Surrey) that were 18 lines"
,..,
My recollection, Bruce, is that the inclusion of these within the "Sonnet" definition & category has been a subject of some taxonomic debate & disagreement within the prosodically defining part of the academic community. I probably read all about it at some stage during my undergraduate days, 1952-55. But I honestly haven't the energy to go back into it again ~~ a bit like Mr Brooke in Middlemarch who, you will recall, constantly claims to have "gone into all that at one time". So I will concede that you might well have a point here; but OTOH...

Best regards anyhow
~M~

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 04 Feb 14 - 11:18 AM

When Wyatt brought the form back from Italy, SOME of his "English Sonnets" were 18 lines. The standard in English is 14 lines- the 18 line variant never caught on.

But what Musket writes ARE NOT SONNETS.

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 04 Feb 14 - 11:24 AM

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503 – 11 October 1542)[1] was a 16th-century English ambassador and lyrical poet. He is credited with introducing the sonnet into English. He was born at Allington Castle, near Maidstone in Kent, though his family was originally from Yorkshire. His mother was Anne Skinner and his father, Henry Wyatt, had been one of Henry VII's Privy Councillors, and remained a trusted adviser when Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509. In his turn, Thomas Wyatt followed his father to court after his education at St John's College, Cambridge. None of Wyatt's poems were published during his lifetime—the first book to feature his verse, Tottel's Miscellany of 1557, was printed a full fifteen years after his death.[2]
…….


Wyatt's professed object was to experiment with the English tongue, to civilise it, to raise its powers to those of its neighbours.[12] A significant amount of his literary output consists of translations and imitations of sonnets by the Italian poet Petrarch; he also wrote sonnets of his own. He took subject matter from Petrarch's sonnets, but his rhyme schemes make a significant departure. Petrarch's sonnets consist of an "octave", rhyming abba abba, followed, after a turn (volta) in the sense, by a "sestet" with various rhyme schemes. Wyatt employs the Petrarchan octave, but his most common sestet scheme is cddc ee. This marks the beginnings of an exclusively "English" contribution to sonnet structure, that is three quatrains and a closing couplet.[13] 15 years after his death, the printer Richard Tottel included 97 poems attributed to Wyatt among the 271 poems in Tottel's Miscellany, Songs and Sonnets.
In addition to imitations of works by the classical writers Seneca and Horace, he experimented in stanza forms including the rondeau, epigrams, terza rima, ottava rima songs, satires and also with monorime, triplets with refrains, quatrains with different length of line and rhyme schemes, quatrains with codas, and the French forms of douzaine and treizaine.[14] Wyatt introduced contemporaries to his poulter's measure form (Alexandrine couplets of twelve syllable iambic lines alternating with a fourteener, fourteen syllable line), [15] and is acknowledged a master of the iambic tetrameter.[16]
While Wyatt's poetry reflects classical and Italian models, he also admired the work of Chaucer and his vocabulary reflects Chaucer's (for example, his use of Chaucer's word newfangleness, meaning fickle, in They flee from me that sometime did me seek). Many of his poems deal with the trials of romantic love, and the devotion of the suitor to an unavailable or cruel mistress.[17] Others of his poems are scathing, satirical indictments of the hypocrisies and flat-out pandering required of courtiers ambitious to advance at the Tudor court.
Wyatt was one of the earliest poets of the English Renaissance. He was responsible for many innovations in English poetry and, alongside Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, introduced the sonnet from Italy into England.[12][18][17] His lyrics show tenderness of feeling and purity of diction. He is one of the originators of the convention in love poetry according to which the mistress is painted as hard-hearted and cruel.

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 04 Feb 14 - 03:31 PM

More modern sonnets can be four line although one line can make the point. To wit. (To woo)

There was a young man from Nantucket...




(Nantucket being a long way from Limerick before you start )

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 04 Feb 14 - 03:44 PM

Sorry, a sonnet is 14 lines.


You are incorrect in calling what you have presented by the name "sonnet"


That would be like me calling a frog a vegetable, because it had something in common with vegetables. I could call it one, but I would be as wrong as you are in this situation.

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 04 Feb 14 - 03:47 PM

But, since you posted, let me continue the countdown…


Sonnet 27/04/06                                  MLVI

I do not own my muse: I am possessed
By longing for her gift. Will she words send,
Echoes of dream, or is silence the best
That heart might hope for, to my longings end?
I do not wish for freedom from the chain
Desire and dream have wound around my heart.
Yet, should heart under her spell still remain
When she has no need for my dreams to start?
I do not have reason to think that time
Will alter situation: All dreams feel
Cannot change past. Can I hope with my rhyme
To even echo of her whisper steal?
I know dream is not real, yet I will rest
Knowing I was, for a while, by muse blessed.

Subject: RE: BS: In every thread someone has to be last!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 04 Feb 14 - 03:48 PM

and 3200!!!