The Sonnet
Introductory Information
• 16th century England
▫ One of the most popular poetic forms
• Italian origin
▫ Amoretti (little love poems)
• Conveys deep and intense feelings
▫ Idealized love
• English poets dedicated their poems to friends
and loved ones
Sonnet Form
• 14 line poem
▫ 3 quatrains, 1 couplet
 Quatrains – four-line units
 Couplet – 2 rhymed lines
• Quatrains
▫ Express 3 different but related thoughts
• Couplet
▫ Provides the conclusion
Sonnet Example
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On Poet-Ape (Ben Johnson)
Poor Poet-Ape, that would be thought our chief,
Quatrain
Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit,
From brokage is become so bold a thief,
As we, the robbed, leave rage, and pity it.
At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean,
Buy the reversion of old plays; now grown
Quatrain
To a little wealth, and credit in the scene,
He takes up all, makes each man's wit his own.
And, told of this, he slights it. Tut, such crimes
The sluggish gaping auditor devours;
Quatrain
He marks not whose 'twas first, and after-times
May judge it to be his, as well as ours.
Fool, as if half eyes will not know a fleece
Couplet
From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece
Copy The Table Below
Section of Poem
Quatrain 1
Quatrain 2
Quatrain 3
Couplet
Main Thought
Sonnet 30 – Edmund Spenser
My love is like to ice, and I to fire:
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,
But harder grows the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold,
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
And feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told,
That fire, which all things melts, should harden ice,
And ice, which is congealed with senseless cold,
Should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,
That it can alter all the course of kind!
Sonnet 75 – Edmund Spenser
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
“Vain man,” said she, “that dost in vain assay,
A mortal thing so to immortalize,
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eek my name be wiped out likewise.”
“Not so,” quod I, “let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by name:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize.
And in the heavens write your glorious name.
Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.”
Sonnet 18 – William Shakespeare
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 dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Now 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.
Sonnet 73 – William Shakespeare
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 see’st 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 though see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed wheron it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This though perceivest, which makes thy love more
strong,
To love that well which though must leave ere long.
Sonnet 106 – William Shakespeare
When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rime
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights;
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have expressed
Even such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And, for they looked but with divining eye,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.