Sonnet — Text 1 of 2

Scorn not the sonnet, critic. Stern Dante did not scorn the sonnet; In it Petrarch poured forth the fire of love; The creator of Macbeth loved its play; Camoens clothed his sorrowful thought in it. And in our days it captivates the poet: Wordsworth chose it as his instrument, When, far from the vain world, He depicted nature's ideal. Beneath the shade of the distant Taurida mountains, The singer of Lithuania, in its compressed meter, Instantly enclosed his dreams. Among us its maidens did not yet know it, When already for it Delvig forgot The sacred melodies of the hexameter. Scorn not the sonnet, critic. Wordsworth (Eng.).