This book is intended for the guidance not of poets but of verse-makers. Yet I cannot forbear quoting Watts-Dunton's admirable statement of the whole content of the sonnet. He writes: "Without being wholly artificial, like the rondeau, the sestina, the ballade, the villanelle, and the rest, the sonnet is yet so artistic in structure, its form is so universally known, recognized, and adopted as being artistic, that the too fervid spontaneity and reality of the poet's emotion may be in a certain degree veiled, and the poet can whisper, as from behind a mask, those deepest secrets of the heart which could otherwise only find expression in purely dramatic forms." As I said, the simplest, and in some respects, the most difficult form of sonnet, has for the rhyme scheme _a, b, b, a, a, b, b, a, c, d, c, d, c, d_. But there is a tendency to vary the rhyme scheme in the sestet--the octave usually is unchanged. One common variation is to have the rhymes of the sestet _c, d, e, c, d, e_, instead of _c, d, c, d, c, d_. This is the scheme we find followed in the sestet of two of "Three Sonnets on Oblivion," by a distinguished American poet, Mr. George Sterling. THREE SONNETS OF OBLIVION BY GEORGE STERLING _Oblivion_ Her eyes have seen the monoliths of kings Upcast like foam of the effacing tide; She hath beheld the desert stars deride The monuments of power's imaginings: About their base the wind Assyrian flings The dust that throned the satrap in his pride; Cambyses and the Memphian pomps abide As in the flame the moth's presumptuous wings. There gleams no glory that her hand shall spare, Nor any sun whose days shall cross her night, Whose realm enfolds man's empire and its end. No armour of renown her sword shall dare, No council of the gods withstand her might-- Stricken at last Time's lonely Titans bend. _The Night of Gods_ Their mouths have drunken the eternal wine-- The draught that Baal in oblivion sips. Unseen about their courts the adder slips, Unheard the sucklings of the leopard whine; The toad has found a resting-place divine, And bloats in stupor between Ammon's lips. O Carthage and the unreturning ships, The fallen pinnacle, the shifting Sign! Lo! when I hear from voiceless court and fane Time's adoration of eternity,-- The cry of kingdoms past and gods undone,-- I stand as one whose feet at noontide gain A lonely shore; who feels his soul set free, And hears the blind sea chanting to the sun.