In these two sonnets, you see, Mr. Sterling has in his sestet the rhymes _c, d, e, c, d, e_, thus having more license than the poet of the sonnet in four rhymes. He uses the same number of rhymes in the final sonnet of this trilogy, but varies the order of the rhymes in the sestet, having for his scheme not _c, d, e, c, d, e_, but _c, d, d, e, c, e_. One objection to this method is that it produces, as you see, a rhymed couplet in the midst of the sestet. _The Dust Dethroned_ Sargon is dust, Semiramis a clod. In crypts profaned the moon at midnight peers; The owl upon the Sphinx hoots in her ears, And scant and dere the desert grasses nod Where once the armies of Assyria trod, With younger sunlight splendid on the spears; The lichens cling the closer with the years, And seal the eyelids of the weary god. Where high the tombs of royal Egypt heave, The vulture shadows with arrested wings The indecipherable boasts of kings, Till Arab children hear their mother's cry And leave in mockery their toy--they leave The skull of Pharaoh staring at the sky. It is seldom that we find such a couplet as: "The vulture shadows with arrested wings, The indecipherable boasts of kings," in the midst of the sestet. But there are many verse writers who use the couplet, unrelated in rhyme to the rest of the sestet, to conclude the sonnet. This of course was Shakespeare's method, but Shakespeare, as we have seen, was not making Petrarchan sonnets. The great danger is that the final couplet will give the conclusion of the sonnet too much of a snap, too much of an epigrammatic flavor. Therefore it is well to avoid this device, although it cannot be denied that some of the greatest sonnets in the language end in a couplet. Some years ago I asked a number of English and American poets and critics to name their favorite brief poems. Many of them chose sonnets, and one of them, Mr. Edward J. Wheeler, a critic of experience and discrimination, for many years the President of the Poetry Society of America, selected a sonnet ending in a couplet--Blanco White's "Night." It may be remarked that this famous sonnet is almost the only one of Blanco White's many compositions to escape oblivion. NIGHT BY JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, This glorious canopy of light and blue? Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus with the host of heaven came, And lo! creation widened in man's view. Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find, Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed, That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind! Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife? If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?