Sonnet

“Sonnet” foregrounds the poet-speaker’s internal, race-related struggle. Johnson uses the sonnet form, traditionally used to address a lover, to open a channel of communication between the speaker and his “heart” (Line 1). In this way, the poem more resembles a lyric—or a song-like poem that expresses the speaker’s feelings—than a traditional sonnet. The struggle’s quality of interiority most clearly presents through the poem’s abstract language. With internal conflicts, the external hardship can be eclipsed by the emotional turmoil the hardship causes. Similarly for Johnson’s speaker, the weight of the “hind’ring shrouds” (Line 11) seems to distract the speaker’s focus from the actual situation of his struggle (in Johnson’s case, this struggle likely relates to racism). Nevertheless, the abstract words, images, and metaphors illuminate the nature of the speaker’s conflict.

It is clear from the beginning that the speaker’s “heart” (Line 1) is the site of his conflict as he tells his heart to “be brave” (Line 1) and not to “falter so” (Line 1). The word “so” denotes the speaker’s active, present observation; the poem’s occasion is a moment of weakness, and this sets the tone of self-restraint and self-consolation for the rest of the work. Likewise, it is unclear when the heart previously uttered “that deep despairing wail” (Line 2), but the word “that,” in reference to the wail, suggests the speaker’s familiarity. These two lines, then, reveal that the conflict is ongoing and has a long history.

How the speaker refers to his heart is also relevant in this context. Though the poem’s archaic second-person personal pronouns “thou,” “thy,” and “thine” (Lines 3, 4, 6, 10, 11, 12) are in keeping with the Renaissance sonnet form, this diction also suggests the speaker’s relationship with his heart; “thou” and its conjugations, though stiff and formal-sounding to a modern ear, were historically informal modes of address (like the Spanish “tú,” while “you” was historically the formal English mode of address). The speaker’s use of “thou” to refer to his heart demonstrates his familiarity with the metaphorical organ (the feeling chamber of their psyche). When the poet states that “[t]hy way is very dark and drear I know” (Line 3), he states it from a place of familiarity, and the word “know” (Line 3) implies a cognitive element beyond the heart.

The poet-speaker attempts to describe this familiar struggle through an extended metaphor of day and night cycles, which first appears when the speaker associates the “dark and drear” (Line 3) way with “the raven-winged night” (Line 5). Line 5 also deviates from iambic pentameter: The line ends with two stressed syllables, “winged night,” rather than an iamb, and the line is one syllable shorter than standard iambic pentameter. These metrical deviations reinforce the line’s gravity, demonstrating the speaker’s understanding of the darkness’ spiritual magnitude. Nevertheless, as the speaker states in the next line, that darkness will be followed by a “blushing morn” (Line 6), suggesting agony’s resolution with time, just as day leads to night.

These natural cycles, particularly in classic poetic forms, invoke the idea of the wheel of fortune (Rota Fortunae), a symbol of human fate consonantly turning such that those on the top will one day be at the bottom, and vice versa. The next few lines—which alternate between opposing depictions of the “dark and drear” (Line 4) night and the “clear and bright” “coming morrow” (Line 7)—reinforce this idea of natural cycles, particularly if “dark” is read as both an absence of light and a descriptor for distress. This connection is clearer, perhaps, when the speaker adopts a directive tone and tells the heart to “Look up […] beyond, surrounding clouds” (Line 9). This move towards personification of the heart shows that the darkness should also be taken as metaphorical, particularly as the “clouds” (Line 9) and “gross darkness” (Line 10) resonate with the “dark and drear” (Line 3) environment in the earlier lines.

The speaker also characterizes this surrounding darkness as a protective yet “hind’ring shroud” (Line 11). The word “shroud,” and its associations with both the darkness and a bodily garment, coalesces into an implied third meaning of darkness—that of dark skin. This matches with the otherwise strange use of the adjective “gross” to define the darkness in Line 10. “Gross,” in this usage, typically indicates indecency, obscenity, or vulgarity, and is generally used in reference to bodies. Under this interpretation, the phrase “gross darkness” (Line 10) refers not only to the speaker’s internal struggle but to how the speaker is viewed by contemporary white society: as a vulgar Black man. Like the raven in the “raven-winged night” (Line 5), the speaker struggles with the traditional connotations of darkness and how they relate to the color of his skin. In the case of the “hind’ring shroud” (Line 11), the speaker views this dark covering, which has come to define the heart, as restrictive.

Though the heart is subject to the kind of prejudice that would argue for the inferiority of Black people, the speaker understands that his heart communicates through heightened poetic forms that rise above such ignorant and dehumanizing notions. Likewise, the fact that the sonnet is lyrical and directed inward further indicates that the “hind’ring shroud” (Line 11) restricts the speaker’s outward expression: Though he tells the heart to not “grope” (Line 10) in its “own gross darkness” (Line 10), the threat and censure of societal racism means that the speaker cannot act on his own advice and instead is forced to hide within himself.