A poet called Petrarch developed the sonnet form in Italy. It is a poem made up of 14 lines of iambic pentameter. An Italian rhyme scheme is ABBA ABBA in the first octave. The sestet can be CDC DCD which was the original scheme, or CDE CDE. The sonnet was brought to England by Sir Thomas Wyatt and The Earl of Surrey who visited Italy during the Renaissance.
Sonnets were originally wrote in Latin but the English poets found the Latin rhyme scheme hard and restrictive in the English language. This was how the English and Shakespearean form developed. They still used 14 lines of iambic pentameter, but the rhyme scheme changed to A BAB C DCD EFE F GG. It would then be three quatrains and then finish up with a rhyming couplet. The Italian and Shakespearean are the most common forms of sonnets. A poet called Milton changed the petrarchan form to fit his own style.
This was known as a Miltonic Sonnet. Italian sonnets always had a pause between the octave; the first octave usually presented a general idea while the sestet would be more concluding. The English sonnet had the pause between the quatrain and the rhyming couplet. Instead of dividing his sonnet into two parts, Milton let his ideas flow onto a final conclusion or statement. The sonnet Let me not to the marriage of true minds is a Shakespearean sonnet written in the 16 th Century. Shakespeare is contemplating about love and how you only have one true love and how you should never let them go.
The Essay on Lord Byron: Sonnet On Chillon (A Formalist Explication)
This poem dramatizes the conflict between liberty and tyranny, specifically in instances where tyrannical forces attempt to squelch liberty by imprisoning those who champion her virtues. The speaker presents a paradox in the beginning of the poem, Eternal Spirit of the chainless mind!/Brightest in dungeons, Liberty, thou art,–For there thy habitation is the heart,– (1,2,3). The speaker ...
Shakespeare does this by comparing love to a guiding star. It is the star to every wandering bark In those days a ship would be called a bark and would navigate by using the stars. This symbolizes that when you have found you love it is the star that can guide you through life. Shakespeare is so sure that love is like this that he wrote: If this be error, and upon me proud I never writ, nor no man ever love This suggests that he feel so strong about true love that if he is wrong about it he must never have loved before. In Shakespeare time, people did not always marry because of love; they would marry because of financial situations or to increase estates. When reading this sonnet I got the feeling that maybe Shakespeare had married because of one of these reasons and then after the marriage found his true love.
O, no! It is an ever – fixed mark This suggests that he is feeling guilty about how he has betrayed his wife by finding another woman who he truly loves. This sonnet also expresses the importance of pure love, love that is not just physical or just about the mind, a love that combines heart, mind and soul. The second sonnet I looked at was called On First Looking into Chapman Homer which was written in the 19 th Century. When I first read this sonnet I was a little confused as to what it was about, but as I read it a second and third time through I began to notice that the poet was speaking of another poet be the name Chapman. The first line is a short statement about where he has traveled. Much have I traveled in the realms of gold This suggests that the person who wrote this poem has traveled a lot and been in among the riches.
The sonnet goes on to compare Chapman’s poetry to that of Apollo: Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. The poet thinks that Chapman’s poetry was so amazing that, Apollo who was the Greek God of poetry was no way as good as him. He then goes on to compare how he felt when he heard this poem to how someone felt when they had discovered a new planet: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken. When writing these lines the poet has used the word ken which is another word for knowledge, this was so that it would rhyme with the word serene so that it would fit the rhyming scheme of a sonnet. The third sonnet was called Anthem for Doomed Youth and was written in the 19 th Century. When I heard the title I thought that it was rather contradicting as when you think of the word Anthem you picture something patriotic and glorified but when I heard Doomed Youth it sounded sad, and morbid.
The Essay on Leave Me O Love Sonnet Narrator Wyatt
Love is a difficult thing to express in words in any given language. It is near impossible to convey the paradoxical pain and pleasure of love that sounds dreadfully horrid but simultaneously magical. Most people are often confused and have a hard time figuring and sorting out exactly how they feel and felt about their love and relationship. However, to love someone or be loved by someone is a ...
This is probably because youth is thought more of as a lively and prosperous time of life but in this context it is thought more as an awful time. This sonnet is about the millions of soldiers that died fighting for their lives during the war. In the first line it mentions passing bells. What passing bells for these who die as cattle Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Passing bells used to be the bells that were rung when someone had died or when a funeral is being held. This line is a short snappy question, which would draw the reader in and catch their attention. It is drawing our minds to think about how many people have died and how it would be impossible to recognize and remember everyone of them when they are dying in huge numbers, just like cattle. Instead of hearing the passing bell ringing which would normally happen, they hear the sound of gun shots around them. Back at home while the war was happening, the family of those fighting were filled with propaganda which labeled fighting as a glorified duty and told that dying for ones country was a true honor. I think that this poet write this sonnet to try and make the soldiers families realize what war was really like.
When a soldier came back from war and was reunited with his family, many of them chose to return to the battlefields with his friends. This was because their family had no real knowledge of the trauma they had gone through and the soldiers would feel like they only people they could relate to would be their fellow men who knew the truth about the battle fields. The Dead Crab By Andrew Young A rosy shield upon its back, That not the hardest storm could crack, From whose sharp edges projected out Black pin point eyes staring about; Beneath, the well knit cote armure That gave to its weak belly, power; The clustered legs with plated joints That ended in stiletto points; The claws like mouths it held outside: – I can not think this creature died By storm or fish or sea fowl harmed Walking the sea so heavily armed; Or does it make for death to be Oneself a living armory I have chosen this sonnet because I love the way it is written. It is though someone is thinking aloud and wondering how this crab may have died. You would think it would be hard for a crab to be killed as it is almost invincible to all other fish and creatures because of its hard shell. A rosy shield upon its back And also its large claws to fend off any other predators.
The Essay on Soldier X World War
Plot I read the book Soldier X by Don L. Wulff son that takes place during the world war II period. The main character of the book is a 16 year old German boy named Erik Brandt. Although Erik lives in Germany he is also half Russian and speaks Russian very well. Erik does not want to be a part of Hilters Nazi army during world war II but he is forced to fight on the side of the Nazis. During one ...
Its claws like mouths… The rhyming scheme for this sonnet is AA BB CC DD. It is also written in iambic pentameter.
