Summer Sonnet

Summer

By:Josiah Conder

 Now day survives the sun. The pale grey skies

A sort of dull and dubious lustre keep

As with their own light shining. Nature lies

Slumbering, and gazing on me in her sleep,

So still, so mute, with fixed and soul-less eyes.

The sun is set, yet not a star is seen:

Distinct the landscape, save where intervene

The creeping mists that from the dark stream rise;

Now spread into a sea with islets broken,

And woodland points, now poised on the thin air:

In the black west the clouds a storm betoken

And all things seem a spectral gloom to wear.

The cautious bat resents the lingering light,

And the long-folded sheep wonder it is not night

http://www.sonnets.org/summer.htm

This poem is in the Petrarchan (Italian) form. Conder did make some modifications. For starters, the rhyme scheme doesn't follow the ABBAABBACDECDE, it is ABABCCB and so forth. Although the rhyme scheme differs, the volta is where it should be. (9th or so line). This ties into the message of the poem because it is all leading up to something great, but ends up not being so great. This tends to happen, we get so excited for summer that we set our expectations too high and they are often not met. Well, I was in the summery mood when I looking for a sonnet so I searched "summer sonnet" and this was the first one that came up, so naturally, I chose it. I was excited for a sonnet all about how fun and warm summertime is, but that is definitely not what this sonnet is about. This sonnet depicts summer as an almost miserable time.