Sonnet Analysis: My Old Sonnets XIII

So this time we will look at a poem consciously, and intentionally, written to try to fit an older model. Obviously this involves archaism; but unlike some others we have looked at, this poem is not simply throwing archaism into an otherwise modern poem, but actually attempting to map onto those older expectations.

Ah, Muse, if thou wilt not stay for my sake
Nor listen to the reasons of my own,
And if hard-hearted towards me thou hast grown,
I charge thee yield thyself to my heartache.
Remain with me to sing my love awake
That she may see the seeds that she has sown.
Do not, O Muse, desert me all alone
And leave me that my heart may ever break.
Thy aid, pray lend to join me in this song;
Not spoke out loud, yet may its verses ring;
When that she reads, O, help her eyes along
That she may hear the love I have to bring,
And though around her other suitors throng,
Let her but hear my loving voice to sing.

What Went Wrong:
In modern terms, an invocation to the Muse makes no sense. It's just weird. But we'll pass that by for the moment, and look at the poem on its own terms: "listen to the reasons of my own" is faulty grammar, by which I mean that it doesn't actually make sense. The poem seems unwilling to decide whether it is a song or something to be read; it almost seems to alternate in the sestet, which can induce intellectual whiplash. Even for an archaic-styled poem, there are some harsh breaks - "not spoke out loud" and "leave me that my heart may ever break" are both perilously close to, if not over, the edge of too much syntactical telescoping, while "when that she reads" turns towards the other extreme.

Not Too Shabby:
Taking the invocation of the Muse as legitimate, it's actually not badly done. The Muse is invoked for a specific purpose, which animates the entire poem. The rhymes are strong, and the octave/sestet division clear. The (unrhymed) couplets in the sestet are, I think, effective, and other than the issue of read/sing confusion, they build effectively. I really like "I charge thee yield thyself to my heartache" as a surprise rhyme for "sake" and as a central line of the entire poem thematically.

Archaism:
This is a poem clearly written to be archaic. It does a good job of picking up the thee and thou correctly, rather than just sticking "-eth" on everything, but there are higher standards than that. The invocation of the Muse, the initial "ah," and the "thou" in the first line are all clear signals, front-loaded in the poem, of what this poem is trying to accomplish chronologically as well as artistically. This is substantially better than throwing archaisms in to make the poem work later after a start that implies a more modern sensibility. The fact that these elements remain used throughout helps as well. I would hardly call this a model of how to do archaism, but certainly it manages to leap the basic hurdles one should avoid tripping over if using archaism as an intentional effect: it does not misuse the constructions, it is formed around a conceit that is appropriate to the style, it continues the effect throughout, and it reads like a coherent whole once the conceit is accepted.