Sonnet Poetry

Sonnet

The form of a sonnet is 14 lines of iambic pentameter.  Sonnets have a noticeable but variable rhyme scheme.  The traditional subjects are love or faith.  There are several types, including Spenserian, French, Italian, and English.

The Italian poet Francesco Petrarch developed the sonnet that bears his name (Italian or Petrarchan sonnet) in the 1300s.  It was introduced into English poetry in the early 1500s by Sir Thomas Wyatt. The first eight lines form an octave (or octet); the rhyme scheme is usually abbaabba or abbacddc.  In this first part the poet  frequently develops the subject and builds tension (a problem or question, for example).  The last six lines are a sestet, and the rhyme scheme can be any pattern of two or three different end-rhyme sounds, such as efefef or effegg or efgefg.   This is where the poet would resolve the tension from the octet somehow; this is called a “turn”.

How do I love thee ? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life !--and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

--Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1850

I enter, and I see thee in the gloom
Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine!
And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine.
The air is filled with some unknown perfume;
The congregation of the dead make room
For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine;
Like rooks that haunt Ravenna's groves of pine
The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb.
From the confessionals I hear arise
Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies,
And lamentations from the crypts below;
And then a voice celestial that begins
With the pathetic words, "Although your sins
As scarlet be," and ends with "as the snow."
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,  1866

The English or Shakespearean sonnet was actually developed first by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, in the early 1500s.  It acquired the name of Shakespearean because that famous playwright used the form so successfully and beautifully.  The rhyme scheme is less flexible (three quatrains and a couplet, or abab cdcd efef gg), but the pattern of theme development has more possibilities.  A common pattern is the development of a subject and its complications until the final couplet offers resolution or release.

(Sonnet 18)

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

  So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this and this gives life to  thee.

        

        --William  Shakespeare

(Sonnet 138)

    When my love swears that she is made of truth              a

    I do believe her, though I know she lies,                            b

    That she might think me some untutor'd youth,   a

     Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.           b

    Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,    c

     Although she knows my days are past the best,                d

     Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:          c

     On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd.    d

    But wherefore says she not she is unjust?           e

     And wherefore say not I that I am old?                            f

     O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,                             e

     And age in love loves not to have years told:     f

     Therefore I lie with her and she with me,           g

     And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.             g

--William Shakespeare

SONNET – TO SCIENCE

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
--Edgar Allan Poe