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Project Gutenberg's The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum, by Wallace Irwin This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum Author: Wallace Irwin Posting Date: September 4, 2009 [EBook #4756] Release Date: December, 2003 First Posted: March 12, 2002 Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOVE SONNETS OF A HOODLUM *** Produced by David A. Schwan. HTML version by Al Haines. The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum by Wallace Irwin With an Introduction by Gelett Burgess Showing how Vanity is still on Deck, & humble Virtue gets it in the Neck! "A Leaden Heart I wear since she forsook me." The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum Introduction "Tell me, ye muses, what hath former ages Now left succeeding times to play upon, And what remains unthought on by those sages Where a new muse may try her pinion?" So Complained Phineas Fletcher in his Purple Island as long ago as 1633. Three centuries have brought to the development of lyric passion no higher form than that of the sonnet cycle. The sonnet has been likened to an exquisite crystal goblet that holds one sublimely inspired thought so perfectly that not another drop can be added without overflow. Cast in the early Italian Renaissance by Dante, Petrarch and Camoens, it was chased and ornamented during the Elizabethan period by Shakespere, and filled with its most stimulating draughts of song and love during the Victorian era by Rossetti, Browning and Meredith. And now, in this first year of the new century, the historic cup is refilled and tossed off in a radiant toast to Erato by Wallace Irwin. The attribute of modernity is not given to every new age. The cogs in the wheels of time slip back, at times. The classic revival may be permeated with enthusiasm, but it is a second edition of an old work--not a virile essay at expression of living thought. The later Renaissance was but half modern in its spirit; the classic period of the eighteenth century in England was half ancient in its mood. But the twentieth century breaks with a new promise of emancipation to English Literature, for a new influence has
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