3 Sonnets (c. 1830–40/1918)
Michael Madhusdan Dutt
“Sonnets” by Michael Madhusdan Dutt is from The Bengali Book of English Verse, assembled and edited by Theodore Douglas Dunn and published in 1918. The whole collection is available on Wikisource, a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. The poem is in the public domain.
The editorial notes are available under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. Unless otherwise attributed, they were written by Dr. Kylee-Anne Hingston at the University of Saskatchewan.
Sonnets
I.
I am not rich, nay, nor the future heir
To sparkling gold or silver heaped on store;
There is no marble blushing on my floor
With thousand varied dies:—no gilded chair,
5
No cushions, carpets that by riches are
Brought from the Persian land, or Turkish shore; [1]
There is no menial waiting at my door
Attentive to the knell: and all things rare,
10
Born in remotest regions, that shine in
And grace the rich-man’s hall, are wanting here.
These are not things that by blind Fate have been
Allotted ever to the poor man’s share:
These are not things, these eyes have ever seen,
Tho’ their proud names have sounded in this ear!
II.
But oh! I grieve not;—for the azure[2] sky
With all its host of stars that brightly shine,
The green-robed earth with all her flow’rs divine,
The verdant vales and every mountain high,
5
Those beauteous meads that now do glittering lie
Clad in bright sun-shine,—all, oh! all are mine!
And much there is on which my ear and eye
Can feast luxurious!—why should I repine?
The furious Gale that howls and fiercely blows,
10
The gentler Breeze that sings with tranquil glee,
The silver Rill that gayly warbling flows,
And e’en the dark and ever-lasting Sea,
All, all these bring oblivion for my woes,
And all these have transcendent [3] charms for me!
Works Cited
Dutt, Michael Madhusdan. “Sonnets.” The Bengali Book of English Verse, edited by Theodore Douglas Dunn, Longsman, Green, and Co., 1918. Wikisource, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Bengali_Book_of_English_Verse/Sonnets_(Michael_Madhusudan_Dutt).
“John Keats.” Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-keats.
Keats, John. “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44477/ode-on-a-grecian-urn.
———. “Ode to a Nightingale.” Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44479/ode-to-a-nightingale.
Oliver, Susan. “Byron’s Eastern Tales: Eastern Themes and Contexts.” Scott, Byron and the Poetics of Cultural Encounter, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005, pp. 156–201.
Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford UP, Sept. 2020, www.oed.com/.
- The distance between Bengal and Turkey is roughly 5,000 km, and there are about 3,000 km between Bengal and Persia. These places are as foreign to Dutt as they are to Byron, whose work he is imitating. For more on Byron’s “Eastern Tales,” read Susan Oliver’s “Byron’s Eastern Tales.” –K.H. ↵
- Azure refers both to the gemstone lapis lazuli and the bright blue colour (“Azure, N. and Adj.” defs. n.1, adj.2.a). –K.H. ↵
- Here, Dutt marks himself as participating in the tropes of Romantic poets, such as John Keats’ focus on transcendence in such poems as “Ode to A Nightingale” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” For more on Keats and transcendence, see Poetry Foundation’ s article on Keats. –K.H. ↵
