Poetry Editor: Hearting the Love Sonnet

Monday, September 8, 2025

Hearting the Love Sonnet

Haiku has been my go-to form of poetry for so long, I’ve seldom given thought to the lasting value and versatility of the sonnet. Then recently, a poet-friend said she planned to focus on studying and writing sonnets, which turned my attention to the subject too. (Thank you, April.)

Shakespeare immediately comes to mind, of course, and also John Milton, John Donne, George Herbert, and numerous other poets who wrote in a variety of poetic forms but with a romantic aside to sonnets. To provide you with some study-worthy examples of this timeless form, most often written in iambic pentameter, I’ve selected sonnets where love poems between two people have elevated into love poems to the Lord.

Leave Me, O Love, Which Reachest but to Dust

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)

Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust,

And thou my mind aspire to higher things:

Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:

Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.

Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might,

To that sweet yoke, where lasting freedoms be:

Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light,

That doth both shine and give us sight to see.

O take fast hold, let that light be thy guide,

In this small course which birth draws out to death,

And think how evil becometh him to slide,

Who seeketh heaven, and comes of heavenly breath.

Then farewell world, thy uttermost I see,

Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me.

…

Easter

by Edmund Spencer (1552-1599)

Most glorious Lord of Life, that on this day

Didst make Thy triumph over death and sin;

And having harrowed hell didst bring away

Captivity thence captive us to win:

This joyous day dear Lord with joy begin;

And grant that we for whom thou didst die

Being with Thy dear blood clean washed from sin

May live forever in felicity!

And that Thy love we weighing worthily

May likewise love Thee for the same again;

And for Thy sake that all like deare didst buy

With love may one another entertain.

So let us love, dear Love, like as we ought.

Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.

…

Earth has not anything to show more fair

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth like a garment wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

God's Grandeur

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1841-1889)

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

…

As you can see, each sonnet includes the standard 14 lines with a volta or turning point, usually on the eighth line or the twelfth.

For additional discussions on the form, visit this previous post. Also, you’ll find below a contemporary (as in, written last week) example of a sonnet in tetrameter with four beats per line instead of five and four rhyming sounds (a personal challenge since I’m a rhyming-minimalist.)

Sonnet Awakened at 3 a.m.

Mary Harwell Sayler

If independence boasts its reward,

when will we dare depend on the Lord?

And if God’s Word calls for accord,

why do we wield it like a sword?

Let us, as One, world’s ways despise,

but see each person as God’s prize

and look for Love through Spirit eyes.

Such love will heal us and surprise.

Begone, you selfish, sightless core!

If need be, grope for Jesus’ door.