shakespearean love sonnet examples by students

In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73, for example, the speaker describes the ravages of his old age for the first twelve lines, and finally reveals his point only in the couplet: “This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, /To love that well which thou must leave ere long.” This couplet acts as a surprising resolution to the problem expressed throughout the sonnet. Although the turn (called a volta) in the Shakespearean sonnet often occurs in the ninth line, it can also be reserved for the final couplet. Each four-line quatrain is unified in its topic. This structure creates a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg.

The Shakespearean sonnet, or English sonnet, consists of three quatrains and a couplet. In Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus”, for example, the octave describes the appearance of the Statue of Liberty, while the sestet records the words the statue speaks to the nation’s immigrants. The poem’s turn comes as the lines transition from the octave to the sestet. The final six lines, or sestet, may fluctuate in their pattern, but generally follow a rhyme of cdecde, cdcdcd, or cddcdd. This sonnet begins with an eight-line octave following a rhyme scheme of abbaabba. The Petrarchan sonnet, also called the Italian sonnet, is named after the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca who popularized the form in the 14th century. The two most common variations are known as the Petrarchan sonnet and the Shakespearean sonnet. It is in the rhyme structure that many sonnets vary. This pattern continues for fourteen lines, wherein the end words of each line also rhyme according to a particular schema. The line “Shall I com pare thee to a summer’s day”, for example, stresses every second syllable, for a total of ten syllables. Each line of a sonnet is written in iambic pentameter, a meter made up of five sets of unstressed-stressed syllable blocks, called iambs. A sonnet is a 14-line poem containing a specific meter and rhyme scheme.

Shakespearean love sonnet examples by students