Love In Henry Frank Lott's One Hundred Sonnets

Henry Frank Lott, a working-class poet, attempts to use his writings as an escape from the reality of everyday life. However, he focuses on the everyday workings of lives in the laboring class. Lott mainly writes about the subjects occurring in his life, such as love, family, and friends. The three main phases written into One Hundred Sonnets are his process of accepting the passion of love, the process of grief after losing a lover, and the love he has for his mother. In Lott’s One Hundred Sonnets, the first phase of his poetry consists of talk of a woman, for whom the author has feelings for. Lott writes in sonnet VI, “Eliza! Thou remeberest how wild/My transports were, how tender, deep, and strong/The love that burn’d within me, and how …show more content…
The relationship ends and Lott now tries to come to terms with the loss of his love. Lott does this in two obvious stages: anger and sadness. These two opposing forces are very common reactions after a relationship ends. In sonnet LXXVI, he exclaims, “But she was selfish, frivolous, and vain—/Her soul untouch’d by any gentle strain—/Her eye unlit by any tender gleam—“. Lott is expressing his feeling of anger by exploring the nature of what he didn’t like about his lover. He claims her negative qualities, but leaves her better qualities untouched, when he had previously raved about them. Next, instead of being angry at her, he is angry at himself. This is presented in sonnet LIX: “Queen of the rosy cheek! weak men possesses/The truest source of early joy in thee;/Yet leaves thine arms to seek the wild excesses/Of folly, fashion, and debauchery. This transition is marked with the transitioning of the blame for the end of the relationship from her worse qualities to what he did wrong, and could’ve changed. He was a ‘weak m[a]n’, a ‘seek[ed] the wild excesses”, which leads readers to think he cheated. After he is done being angry, Lott proceeds to be depressed. In sonnet LIII, Lott writes, “Scarcely my lonely pillow had I press’d,/When straightaway dream’d I, that again my head,/…was softly laid/Upon thy beautifully-rounded breast,/…And I awoke abruptly—and in vain/Besought the magic …show more content…
He writes in sonnet XXXVII, “Secrurely rest on my more virgorous arm,--/Time the protectorship revereves now./If, by God’s blessing, health and strength allow,/My toil shall comfort thee…/May I the debt that’s due repay/By feeling grateful, and by aiding thee!” Lott is not loudly crowing about his love for his Mother as he did for his lover, but he is showing it through his actions and promises to take care of her as she grows old. He is willing to pay back the debt he owes her because she took good care of him as a boy. He writes about how his mother has been there for him lovingly in sonnet XXXV. “Thy breast has been to me a holy shrine,/Where love unselfish, glowing gratitude,/With all that makes us kind, or leaves us good…/A mother’s love! while I such boon possess…” Lott uses these lines to explain that his mother has been there for him throughout his whole life, and his mother’s love is a precious gift to him. Lott loves his mother, and shows this throughout his