On It Like a Sonnet

Fourteen lines of fun, fun, fun.

A Sonnet...

...has fourteen lines.

...is written in iambic pentameter

...follows a specific rhyme scheme,depending on the type of sonnet.

...often involves love or nature,but it doesn’t have to.

...introduces a problem or question in the beginning, and a resolution is offered after the shift (volta).

Iambic Pentameter

--An iamb is two beats (or one foot).--A “foot” is an unstressed syllable

followed by a stressed syllable.--Penta means five (line has five feet).--Meter is the rhythm of the poem.

The English Sonnet...

...is also called a Shakespearean sonnet.

...includes three quatrains (four lines)and a couplet (two lines).

...typically has a rhyme scheme of:ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.

...contains a shift (volta) aftereight lines or ten lines.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.    And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare    As any she belied with false compare.Sonnet 130

By William Shakespeare

Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bushThat overhung a molehill large and round,I heard from morn to morn a merry thrushSing hymns to sunrise, and I drank the soundWith joy; and often, an intruding guest,I watched her secret toil from day to dayHow true she warped the moss to form a nest,And modelled it within with wood and clay;And by and by, like heath-bells gilt with dew,There lay her shining eggs, as bright as flowers,Ink-spotted over shells of greeny blue;And there I witnessed, in the sunny hours,A brood of nature's minstrels chirp and fly,Glad as the sunshine and the laughing sky.

The Thrush’s NestBy John Clare

Death be not proud, though some have called theeMighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,And soonest our best men with thee do go,Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?One short sleep past, we wake eternally,And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.--John Donne

An Italian Sonnet...

...is also called a Petrarchan Sonnet.

...includes an octave (eight lines)and a sestet (six lines).

...must begin with ABBAABBAand can conclude with any variation ofC, D, and E (CDECDE, CDCDEE, etc.).

...includes its volta between the octaveand the sestet.

Fourteen small broidered berries on the hemOf Circe’s mantle, each of magic gold;Fourteen of lone Calypso’s tears that rolledInto the sea, for pearls to come of them;Fourteen clear signs of omen in the gemWith which Medea human fate foretold;Fourteen small drops, which Faustus, growing old,Craved of the Fiend, to water Life’s dry stem.It is the pure white diamond Dante broughtTo Beatrice; the sapphire Laura woreWhen Petrarch cut it sparkling out of thought;The ruby Shakespeare hewed from his heart’s core;The dark, deep emerald that Rossetti wroughtFor his own soul, to wear for evermore.

Fourteen small broidered berries on the hemOf Circe’s mantle, each of magic gold;Fourteen of lone Calypso’s tears that rolledInto the sea, for pearls to come of them;Fourteen clear signs of omen in the gemWith which Medea human fate foretold;Fourteen small drops, which Faustus, growing old,Craved of the Fiend, to water Life’s dry stem.It is the pure white diamond Dante broughtTo Beatrice; the sapphire Laura woreWhen Petrarch cut it sparkling out of thought;The ruby Shakespeare hewed from his heart’s core;The dark, deep emerald that Rossetti wroughtFor his own soul, to wear for evermore.