a certain indefinite number of Petrarchan “sonnets”: №144
Ordinarily I don’t publish so much poetry at Theoria-press, and instead try to provide mostly essays with an odd poem or sonnet occasionally interspersed among them. But the Muse’s visits have outstripped my ability to keep pace with prose pieces so readers who prefer essays should peruse the archives of this site, which are replete with them. Also, I should acknowledge that the formal aspect of this “Petrarchan sonnet” is liberally conceived so it’s unnecessary to alert me that at “Petrarchan sonnet” with 16 lines and an unorthodox rhyme-scheme is like a quartet with 5 members, though reproof is always welcome from anyone who feels so moved.
WHEN WINTER’S cinched its cords of ice and cold and words refuse their service to our hearts so fail their temperate rhythms to impart new sparks to kindle brands from flames of old when bards declaimed their epics loud and bold and bounding o’er the hills like lusty harts their speech a youthful branch of Nature’s arts even as their tales the day foretold when Nature’s inspiration would have ceased her springs dried up, her oracles grown dumb and yet in darkness men have kept the feast and kindled need-fires still with hands grown numb and so through tide of seasons still increased the saving power of the age to come a flower blooms where it’s expected least a promise of what we’ll one day become
God willing!