Sonnet XIX

Author’s Note:

This poem is a hybrid of the Shakespearean (also known as English) sonnet—three quatrains and a concluding couplet, in iambic pentameter, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg,—and the Cyhydedd Fer sonnet, a Welsh form consisting of seven rhyming couplets of eight syllables each, typically in iambic tetrameter. Here, the Shakespearean structure and rhyme scheme are employed in combination with the octosyllabic lines of the Cyhydedd Fer, substituting trochaic tetrameter for iambic. In the first quatrain, two of the lines are catalectic, meaning that the last syllable is truncated, giving an alternating meter of 7.8.7.8, a pattern also used in a number of hymn tunes. (For example, the first six lines may be sung to the tune “Liebster Jesu.”)

Like The Voyage of Life, a series of paintings by Thomas Cole, the poem serves as an allegory for the path of a human being from infancy to death—in the first stanza moving from baubles, to grasping object permanence, to sitting, crawling, and walking; then onto understanding more advanced ideas such as those of Mandelbrot (perhaps while enjoying a delicious morsel of Mandelbrot) and experiencing complex emotional states, represented here by limerence. The culinary term mise en place is used here not only in its usual way but also in a broader sense, suggesting how one may learn to apply principles of order and organisation to thought and action.

The second and third stanzas, and the final couplet, hint at the ongoing examination of ideas and of the paths one may take in life, including the consideration of epistemology and ontology, and of the serendipities and mishaps which one may encounter throughout life. Such ideas and experiences may be understood variously from secular, religious, mystical, esoterical, scientific, and other perspectives.