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Vallance Review 41, January 2005 Sonnets to help you fall asleep on a cold winter's night! 
Gustave Doré (1832-1883). Le Sommeil = Sleep
INTRODUCTION
For the first Vallance Review of 2005, we are reviewing two Renaissance sonnets on the subject of sleep, the first by Samuel Daniel (1562-1619), "Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night", from his sonnet collection, Delia (1592) [1], and the second by his French contemporary, Pontus de Tyard (1521-1605), "Père du doux repos, Sommeil, père du Songe" (1573) [2]. Our review will either rouse you just a little while from your peaceful winter slumber or it will help you snooze comfortably right through the long winter months, just like the bears hibernating in their dens. In any case, it should make for edifying reading.
The Sonnets
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born, Relieve my languish, and restore the light; With dark forgetting of my care return. And let the day be time enough to mourn The shipwreck of my ill adventured youth: Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn, Without the torment of the night's untruth. Cease, dreams, the images of day-desires, To model forth the passions of the morrow; Never let rising Sun approve you liars To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow: Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain, And never wake to feel the day's disdain. Samuel Daniel (1562-1619) 
Maintenant que la nuit, d’une grande ombre obscure, Fait à cet air serein humide couverture, Viens, Sommeil désiré et dans mes yeux te plonge. Ton absence, Sommeil, languissamment allonge Jà le muet silence un escadron conduit Viens, Sommeil désiré, m’environner la tête, Pontus de Tyard (1521-1605) 
Rest, Father of Sleep and of my Dreams, behold, I languish in your absence, brother Sleep; And now your ghosts whisk silently by me, Come, belovèd Sleep, and surround me quite Petrarchan sonnet in English adapted from Pontus de Tyard
Are there many Renaissance poems and sonnets on sleep and dreams?
The short answer is "no". Now, if we pause to examine Renaissance poetry in any of the major languages, and here I am referring primarily to English, French and Italian, we soon discover that certain underlying themes often recur. True to form, these themes are found in period sonnets as much as they are in any other primary genre of the day and age, such as troubador songs, odes, pastorals, elegies and quatrains. We need only call to mind just a few of the most memorable Renaissance poetry titles to realize just how commonplace some of these themes were. At its most generic level, the most common theme in Renaissance poetry can be summarized in one word, "love". Unfortunately, encapsulating Renaissance poetry thematics under this one rubric is actually very misleading, in so far as anyone can easily claim that the theme of love is a common denominator to the poetry of almost any literary era, let alone the Renaissance. Medieval poets such as Dante Alighieri and Francesco Petrarch had frequent recourse to the claims of love, whether spiritual or erotic, as did the Neoclassical poets of the eighteenth century, the Romantics and the Victorians of the nineteenth, and indeed a wide spectrum of poets of the twentieth. Precisely what we need to ask ourselves is this: what contra distinguishes Renaissance love poetry from its counterparts in other literary periods? Closer examination of Renaissance poetry reveals certain salient characteristics of the themes it most often has recourse to. One of the most striking features of Renaissance poetic themes is their remarkable similarity to the major thematic contours of classical Greek and Latin poetry. Even before Dante and Petrarch, the Italian Renaissance poets made frequent and explicit allusions to classical poetic themes, for instance, the influence of the goddess Venus, the god, Apollo, and the Muses on their poetry and the inspiration driving it. Unlike their Medieval forbears, who wrote almost exclusively in Latin and who focused their attention almost entirely on their Christianity, the early Italian Renaissance poets began to revive the ancient classical legends, which had heretofore been taboo. One of the most deliciously vivid of these legends was that of Venus and Adonis, which great ancient poets such as the Greek lyricists Sappho and Alcaeus (7th. century B.C.), and the Roman poets, Horace and Ovid had celebrated, and which the Italian, French and English Renaissance poets all latched onto with gusto. We need only recall William Shakespeare's lush pastoral ode, "Venus and Adonis" to realize just how deeply the classical ideals had infused Renaissance poetry. By analogy, broadening their horizons, the Renaissance poets also began exploring various avenues for the theme of love, including, amongst others, the vicissitudes of love, the pining lover, the psychological relationship between the lover and his belovèd and the plight of the jilted lover. Even a cursory examination of the outlines of Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis" already reveals the presence of all of these adjunct themes. What is true of Renaissance poetry in general is also true of Renaissance sonnets. Still, all of this begs the question, what, if any, is the possible relationship between the avatars of the theme of love shot through almost all Renaissance poetry in general and sonnets in particular, and the subject of the two sonnets we are reviewing this month, viz.: Samuel Daniel's and Pontus de Tyard's sonnets on sleep and dreams? The connection is subtle and implicit, but it is there. While it is difficult to bring evidence directly to bear on the implied relationship between the theme of love in Renaissance sonnets and that of sleep and dreams, a rapport between the two nonetheless exists. The implicit relationship between the vicissitudes of love on the one hand and the claims of sleep and dreams on the other is in fact explicitly made in some Renaissance poems and sonnets. It is because the lover pines after his belovèd, because his mistress scorns him and because he feels jilted and ignored that the lover finds it so difficult and sometimes even impossible to fall asleep, tormented as he is by the psychological ravages of love and its harsh demands on his heart and soul. Let us draw on just three examples of sonnets, in which the poet's struggles with the demands of love are explicitly linked with the bonds of sleep and dreams. We need only recall Sir Philip Sidney's Sonnet 39, from "Astrophel and Stella" to witness the obvious link between love and sleep, where he exclaims:
The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe, [verses 1 & 2] And if these things, as being thine by right, Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) [3] Here the reference to the indissoluble bond between the trials and tribulations of love and the profound relief sleep brings the tortured poet's soul is made explicit. It is because he suffers so from his love for Stella that Sir Philip Sidney so ardently seeks the refuge of "sleep, the certain knot of peace". Here's another example of the same, from Sonnet XLIII (43) by "the immortal bard" himself:
For all the day they view things unrespected; But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee, And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed. [first quatrain] All days are nights to see till I see thee, William Shakespeare (1564-1616) [4] Again, the link between the pining lover's desire to see his belovèd and his dreams is explicitly drawn. For our third and last example of the explicit bond between love and dreams, we draw upon a sonnet by the renowned French Renaissance poet, Louise Labé:
Entens ma voix qui en pleins chantera, Tant que ta face au haut du Ciel luira, Son long travail et souci ennuieus. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Bright Venus, who wander through the Heavens, Louise Labé (1524-1566) Here, the sonneteer not only invokes love as the source of her miseries, but actually offers up a prayer to the goddess of love in person, Venus! So the bond between sleep and dreams on the one hand and the sufferings and chagrin of love on the other could not be more apparent. Such is not the case with either Samuel Daniel's sonnet or Pontus de Tyard's. In neither of these poems is there any mention whatsoever of the strong claims and harsh demands love must make on the sonneteer. However, the presence of love as the harsh taskmaster which literally drives the poet to ardently and actively long for the balm of sleep and the illusions of dreams is very likely the psychological spring levering the sonnets' inspiration. Samuel Daniel actually refers to the claims of passion per se, when he laments:
To model forth the passions of the morrow; although we should perhaps be a little cautious in inferring too much from his use of the word "passions" and the phrase "day-desires", since in Renaissance English, "passions" could refer to any human desires, lusts or passions, let alone those of love. Be it as it may, the allusion is still present. This sort of allusion is even more clearly demonstrated by yet another sonnet by Louise Labé in the same series as her Venus sonnet just quoted. In this second sonnet, we note that she too makes no explicit reference to the indissoluble link between love and dreams, but we are left with the distinct impression that this bond is implicit. I draw this conclusion by inference, not only from the fact that the quote which follows is from a sonnet in the same series as the previous one I have cited by Louise Labé, but also from the tradition of Renaissance love and sleep sonnets we have already amply cited above. In other words, period sonnets relating love with sleep and dreams may be classified as a Renaissance convention. Citing Louise Labé's second sonnet, we discover, almost to our amazement, that it too is almost a carbon copy of Samuel Daniel's and Pontus de Tyard's:
O dous sommeil, o nuit à moy heureuse! Et si jamais ma povre ame amoureuse * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Oh sweet sleep, oh night so happy to me! And if my poor soul in love Louise Labé (1524-1566) [6] There is only one small difference between this sonnet (Louise Labé's Sonnet IX) and those of Samuel Daniel and Pontus de Tyard. In her sonnet, Louise Labé mentions in passing and only once her "poor soul in love", whereas Daniel and du Tyard never mention this. But that is my whole point. In the three sonnets I cited above by Sidney, Shakespeare and the first one by Louise Labé ("Claire Vénus"), the link between love and dreams is explicit. In her second sonnet (IX), Louise Labé only mentions love once, and then only almost as an afterthought ... or is it really almost? I think not. She actually means us to understand that it is precisely because she is in love that she finds herself almost begging to fall asleep and to drown herself in the illusions of her dreams. It is at this pivotal point that her sonnet IX corresponds almost exactly with those of Samuel Daniel and Pontus de Tyard in its imagery and in its thematic outlines. For this reason alone, I am inclined to believe that both Daniel and de Tyard had the trials and tribulations of their own love in mind when they penned their immortal sonnets, even though they never explicitly mention love anywhere in their sonnets. It is precisely this subtleness and this ambiguity which invests these sonnets with their unusually vivid psychological power.
Why are these sonnets so remarkably similar? Is it co-incidence, synchronicity or something even more? We have already seen that the two sonnets we have flagged for review this month are so similar in content and imagery as to beg the question: did the poets know one another? From the date of publication alone of the two sonnets (1573 for Pontus de Tyard's and 1592 for Samuel Daniel's), and in light of the fact that one of these sonneteers is French and the other English, this would seem highly unlikely. Now, if we add Louise Labé's Sonnet IX to the equation, since it is strikingly like the other two, once we realize that hers was published in 1555, the likelihood that these sonneteers shared the exact same subject matter seems very remote indeed. How then does it so happen that these same sonneteers composed 3 sonnets, each about 20 years apart, yet managed somehow to write on almost exactly the same theme? The answer lies not in their own wellspring of inspiration, however original it may have been, great as these sonneteers were, but in the phenomenon of recurrent themes or conventions which Renaissance poets were so fond of espousing. We already know what the major themes were, love and the lover's valiant struggles with it. What truly can come as a surprise to many modern readers of renaissance poets is the idea that some of them should have had recourse to writing sonnets about a topic as apparently esoteric as sleep and dreams. However, in the context of the psychological impact of love on the weary lover, it should come as less of a surprise. There is one more aspect of Renaissance conventions, with specific reference to the theme of sleep and dreams, we should also take into consideration. Like their ancient forbears, the Renaissance poets, beginning with the Italians, Dante and Petrarch, following through with the great French sonneteers of La Pléiade, Joachim du Bellay, Pierre de Ronsard, Pontus de Tyard and Louise Labé, and culminating in the sonnets of the great Elizabethan poets such as Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare and Samuel Daniel, all followed specific conventions in the composition of their sonnets. The use of conventional themes went so far as to result in formula writing. By this we mean the Renaissance sonneteers had recourse to specific formula phrases, which they all used over and over, in various permutations and combinations. Of course, some of these poets were more adept, cleverer and more imaginative at devising variants on these formula phrases than were others. I leave it to you, the reader, to judge which sonneteers were able to devise the most imaginative and colourful turns of phrase. One thing is obvious, however: intertextual examination of the 3 sonnets we have flagged in this review reveals a remarkable consistency, not only in their actual wording, but in the use and disposition of imagery, and even in the logical progression of thematic development in the sonnets. And that is what we mean when we speak of conventions in Renaissance sonnets. These conventions are readily discernible in all 3 of the sonnets we have analyzed above.
The Andante Music of Sleep and Dreams
On one last parting note, we wish to draw our readers' attention to the fact that, not only do the aforementioned sonnets follow strict conventions, but that these conventions are highly conducive to musical adaptations. Since the phraseology of the sonnets is entirely consistent, it is easily adapted to music scores. This reviewer has come upon no less than five scores for Samuel Daniel's, "Care-charmer Sleep", some of which are referenced in our notes below [7]. Our approach here is consistent with that we have adopted in previous Vallance Reviews. It has always been our contention that lyrical poetry, and especially the sonnet, is readily adaptable to musical scoring. The ancient lyric poets, such as Sappho and Alcaeus, in fact sang their poems to the accompaniment of the lyre. Likewise, Francesco Petrarch played the lute with consummate skill. While both Renaissance sonneteers and those of later eras did not routinely compose their sonnets with the actual intention of scoring them to music, nevertheless, as we have already witnessed in previous reviews, the sonnets of many great poets, amongst them Francesco Petrarch, Pierre de Ronsard, Sir Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare and William Lisle Bowles, have all been set to music. We can add Samuel Daniel's "Care-Charmer Sleep" to that rather remarkable musical repertoire. © by Richard Vallance December 18 2004, with the editorial assistance of Jim Dunlap (USA) and Eric Linden (Canada) Coming in February 2005, "My Cat Jeoffry", by Christopher Smart (1722-1771).
Vallance Review 42 features what is arguably one of the earliest examples of free verse poetry in English, Christopher Smart's humorous and witty poem about his cat, Jeoffry. February is the month we usually write a review on sonnets about love, but this year, as cat lovers ourselves, we will be taking a different tack, reviewing instead this wonderful poem about a feline lover's adoration of his all-too remarkable cat. So keep posted! REFERENCES & NOTES:
[1] Luminarum. From Delia, by Samuel Daniel. XLV FROM: The Golden Treasury. Francis Turner Palgrave, Ed. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Company. nd. pg. 31 Richard Vallance is the author of: Canadian Federation of Poets: Poetry Lessons: Lesson & Exercise - Week 18 SONNETS in The Canadian Federation of Poets weekly Poetry Progress Lessons & Exercises series The Vallance Review is frequently cited in our Canadian sonnet journal, SONNETTO POESIA ISSN 1706-4524. To read the current issue or any back issues, you may visit the sonnet journal's Home Page here: 
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