, looks as if he desired
to shield her personality from too blunt a guess. However, many hints
are given; she lives in the "joyful North," in "fair Albion;" she is
"The eternal wonder of our happy Isle."
And the river by which he sounds her name is the Avon--
"But Avon, poor in fame and poor in waters,
Shall have my song, where Delia hath her seat."
The Wiltshire Avon is the proud brook that flows southward by Wilton,
"where Delia hath her seat." If it may seem in any degree unfitting that
Daniel should address language so glowing as is found in the _Delia_
sonnets to a lady who is established as the head of a household with
husband and sons about her, attention may be called to the fact that the
sonnets, though they are characterised by warmth of feeling and
extravagance of expression, do not contain one tainted line. Posterity
must justify what Daniel in proud humility said of himself:
"I . . . . . . .
. . . never had my harmless pen at all
Distained with any loose immodesty,
But still have done the fairest offices
To virtue and the time."
The respectful dignity of Daniel's prose dedication of _Delia_ to Mary
Sidney cannot be surpassed; and the introductory sonnet that displaces
it in the next edition, while confessing the ardent devotion of the
writer, is yet couched in the most reverent terms. Daniel and other
sonneteers had the great example of Petrarch in honouring a lady with
admiration and love expressed in verses whose warmth might perhaps not
have been so excusable, could the poet have been taken at his word.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25