THE

ENGLISH SONNET

BY

T. W. H. CROSLAND

Assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme, for

I am sure I shall turn sonnets.

LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.

LONDON

MARTIN SECKER

NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET

ΤΟ

RAFAEL SABATINI

Out of old Italy, which was a flame,
A fragrance and a music, you have built
Empictured shrines of porphyry and of gilt,
Each of them lamped for damsel and for dame,
And for that Duke-the terrible of name—
Red as his bulls, or as the blood he spilt,
With Murder written on his jewelled hilt
And Glory laughing by the road he came.

Princes and Popes and Doges are for you,
And all their wild, sweet women—steels that rust
And loves that perished. Now in love and awe
Let us remember one who loved most true,
And, while the world flashed past him to the dust,
Set up, in Padua, his golden law.

T. W. H. C.

LONDON: MARTIN SECKER (LTD) 1917

NOTE

The main theory of the Sonnet set forward in the first sections of this book has not before been propounded. The theory as to the true origin of the Sonnets of Shakespeare is also new. The Sonnets printed on separate pages in Book II are the finest in the bannage.

T. W. H. C