Saturday, September 8, 2012

Dorothy Sayers: Saturday Sonnet

In honor of the start of the school year, here's a sonnet from Dorothy L. Sayers' Gaudy Night, about the still harbor (and the concomitant vibrant motion) offered by the academy. Within the setting of the novel, Harriet Vane writes the opening octave, and Peter Wimsey writes the closing sestina. (As an added bonus, the whole thing weighs in on the sleep trope that resonates throughout the work.)

Here, then, at home, by no more storms distrest,
Folding laborious hands we sit, wings furled;
Here in close perfume lies the rose-leaf curled,
Here the sun stands and knows not east nor west,
Here no tide runs; we have come, last and best,
From the wide zone through dizzying circles hurled,
To that still centre where the spinning world
Sleeps on its axis, to the heart of rest.

Lay on thy whips, O Love, that we upright,
Poised on the perilous point, in no lax bed
May sleep, as tension at the verberant core
Of music sleeps; for, if thou spare to smite,
Staggering, we stoop, stooping, fall dumb and dead,
And, dying, so, sleep our sweet sleep no more.

For a probing discussion of this sonnet, see the comments on this entry in the blog Commonplaces.

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