Marie E. J. Pitt's characteristics are a beating rhythm and a spirit of social revolt. Furnley Maurice exhibits more restraint in his sonnets than in most of his, on the whole, diffuse poetry. Our sonneteers exhibit a distinct tendency to write sequences, either of two or three sonnets, or, when the impulse is stronger, until it exhausts itself in twenty, fifty, or even a hundred or more, as in Baylebridge's Love Redeemed . Despite famous examples to the contrary, however, I believe that the genius of the form always, in the end, will seek concentration and independence. Most of the great sequences are formed from the sortings of many years, whilst the writer has often been at much pains to find a thread of connection.
Love is the subject most often chosen.
Patrick Moloney is still remembered for his Sonnets Ad Innuptam . Frederick T. Macartney in Earthern Vessels , worked out a theme in sonnets with relentless logic and high metrical finish. It is certainly a remarkable performance, and I have derived much pleasure from the contemplation of its ingenuity, but the pleasure afforded is of a different nature from that with which I dwell upon the record, irrevocable and complete, of a single creative impulse. Nevertheless, five years later, the Bulletin Red Page contained a sequence of his, entitled Sonnets of Civilization , from which I have quoted. Some of these names, which appeared in the original edition, are still in evidence.