Poetry Unit – Sonnets
Name: _______________________________________________ Period: _________________
Sonnets
Learn:
Sonnet comes from the Italian word sonetto meaning “little song.” There are
many popular types of sonnets including the Italian sonnet and the most familiar, the
English sonnet, or the Shakespearean sonnet. Shakespeare became the most
widely known poet to use the English version, thus its name.
Define:
Quatrain: ______________________________________________________________
Couplet: ______________________________________________________________
Iambic pentameter: ______________________________________ ________________
Sonnet Equation:
(3 X Quatrain)+ Couplet = Sonnet
Rhyme Scheme:
a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g.
Practice:
Label The Sonnet: Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18
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:
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.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
Your assignment is to create a sonnet.
Requirements:
1. Must follow Shakespearean sonnet form:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
3 Quatrains and a Couplet
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou
wander'st inC-D-C-D
his shade,
A-B-A-B
E-F-E-F
G-G
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Shakespearean Sonnet 126
O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle, hour;
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st
Thy lovers withering as thy sweet self grow'st;
If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,
As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill.
Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure!
She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure:
Her audit, though delay'd, answer'd must be,
And her quietus is to render thee.
On His Being Arrived to the Age of Twenty-three By John Milton
(Italian Sonnet)
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, (a)
Stolen on his wing my three and twentieth year! (b)
My hasting days fly on with full career, (b)
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. (a)
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth, (a)
That I to manhood am arrived so near, (b)
And inward ripeness doth much less appear, (b)
That some more timely-happy spirits indu'th. (a)
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow, (c)
It shall be still in strictest measure even (d)
To that same lot, however mean or high, (e)
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven. (d)
All is, if I have grace to use it so, (c)
As ever in my great Task-master's eye. (e)