Page:Female Prose Writers of America.djvu/244

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ELIZABETH C. KINNEY.
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound; Camoens soothed with it an exile’s grief; The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leafAmid the cypress with which Dante crowned His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,It cheered mild Spenser, called from Fairy-land To struggle through dark ways; and, when a dampFell round the path of Milton, in his hand The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew Soul-animating strains—alas, too few!”

But the Sonnet is not confined to the Old World:—certain also of our own poets have with this magic “key” unlocked the heart; with this “glow-worm lamp,” shed light into the enshrouded mind; with this “pipe,” awakened tones musical as the shepherd god sent through Arcadian vales; with this “myrtle leaf,” made green again the cypress-crowned brow; with this “trumpet,” sounded the victory of the spirit over human passions and earth-born hopes.

“And what shall we say more? Time would fail us to tell of” all that the Sonnet has effected—of all who have made it the mighty instrument for the soul’s unwritten music.

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