Sonnets With Attitude

I. The Italian (or Petrarchan) Sonnet:

The Italian sonnet is divided into two sections by two different groups of rhyming sounds. The first 8 lines is called the octave and rhymes:

a b b a a b b a

The remaining 6 lines is called the sestet and can have either two or three rhyming sounds, arranged in a variety of ways:

c d c d c d
c d d c d c
c d e c d e
c d e c e d
c d c e d c

EXAMPLE:

"Missing the Meteors"

A hint of rain--a touch of lazy doubt--

Sent me to bedward on that prime of nights,

When the air met and burst the aerolites,

Making the men stare and the children shout:

Why did no beam from all that rout and rush

Of darting meteors, pierce my drowsed head?

Strike on the portals of my sleep? and flush

My spirit through mine eyelids, in the stead

Of that poor vapid dream? My soul was pained,

My very soul, to have slept while others woke,

While little children their delight outspoke,

And in their eyes' small chambers entertained

Far notions of the Kosmos! I mistook

The purpose of that night--it had not rained.

II. The Spenserian Sonnet:

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

Sonnet 75 from the Amoretti

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 doest 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 (quoth I), let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name.

Where when as Death shall all the world subdue,
Out love shall live, and later life renew.

III. The English (or Shakespearian) Sonnet:

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

XXVII (27)

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, The dear repose for limbs with travel tired; But then begins a journey in my head To work my mind, when body's work's expired:

For then my thoughts--from far where I abide--
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see:
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.

IV. The Indefinables

There are, of course, some sonnets that don't fit any clear recognizable pattern but still certainly function as sonnets. Shelley's "Ozymandias" belongs to this category. 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

"Ozymandias"

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.