A Sonata in F Minor for Pianoforte Duet

A Sonata in F Minor for Pianoforte Duet

“written while laid up in a damage with football, in ten days” ~ the teenage Hubert Parry

The schoolboy sport-team member with that heart

Condition just refused to let his weak

Young ticker hold him back.  He struggled. In Hubert’s chart

Contending was the point.  He wasn’t meek

In anything.  A proof of this was what

He did when he was crippled in a game

And forced to spend ten days in sheets:  a spot

Of serious composing.  He would tame

His injury as something he could turn

To good account.  He passed his days in bed

Creating music, managing to churn

Out more than just creations in his head,

A piece for four hands on piano black

And white.  He simply would not let himself go slack.

This poem is part of a shorter sonnet sequence within this large sonnet sequence called The Encyclopedia Sonnetica.  The shorter sonnet sequence is called “A Lively Hope.”  I recommend you read this poem where it is set in its sonnet sequence.  To do that, search for “A Lively Hope” here in The Encyclopedia Sonnetica, or you may see an illustrated version the entire shorter sequence at
https://classicalpoets.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/A-Lively-Hope.pdf 
where it was first published.