Sonnets

·      Italian

o   A sonnet consisting of an octave with the rhyme pattern a b b a a b b a, followed by a sestet with the rhyme pattern c d e c d e or c d c d c d

o   Example: London, 1802 by Wordsworth

§       Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:

England hath need of thee: she is a fen

Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,

Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,

Have forfeited their ancient English dower

Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;

Oh! raise us up, return to us again;

And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.

Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:

Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,

So didst thou travel on life's common way,

In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart

The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

·      English

o   The English sonnet has the simplest and most flexible pattern of all sonnets, consisting of 3 quatrains of alternating rhyme and a couplet:

§  a b a b | c d c d | e f e f | g g

·      Example: Sonnet LXXIII by Shakespeare

o       That time of year thou mayst in me behold,

When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou seest the twilight of such day,

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death's second self that seals up all in rest.

In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the deathbed, whereon it must expire,

Consumed by that which it was nourished by.

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

·      Spenserian

o   The Spenserian sonnet, invented by Edmund Spenser as an outgrowth of the stanza pattern he used in The Faerie Queene (a b a b b c b c c), has the pattern:

§  a b a b b c b c c d c d e e

o   Example: Sonnet LIV by Edmund Spenser

§       Of this World's theatre in which we stay,

My love like the Spectator idly sits,

Beholding me, that all the pageants play,

Disguising diversely my troubled wits.

Sometimes I joy when glad occasion fits,

And mask in mirth like to a Comedy;

Soon after when my joy to sorrow flits,

I wail and make my woes a Tragedy.

Yet she, beholding me with constant eye,

Delights not in my mirth nor rues my smart;

But when I laugh, she mocks: and when I cry

She laughs and hardens evermore her heart.

What then can move her? If nor mirth nor moan,

She is no woman, but a senseless stone.

·      Hybrid

o   There are, of course, some sonnets that don't fit any clear recognizable pattern but still certainly function as sonnets It's rhyming pattern of a b a b a c d c e d e f e f is unique; clearly, however, there is a volta in L9 exactly as in an Italian sonnet:

o   Example: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

§        I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, (stamped on these lifeless things,)

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.