Definition
 Poetry that focuses on emotions or thoughts rather
than telling a story
 The name “lyric” comes from the Greeks- songs
accompanied by a lyre
 Lyric poems tend to be melodiouscreated by use of rhyme, rhythm,
alliteration, onomatopoeia, etc.
Types
 Sonnet
- Shakespearean
- Italian
 Ode
 Elegy
Shakespearean Sonnet
 A fourteen line poem that consists of
three quatrains and one couplet
- Couplet-a pair of lines that rhyme;
concludes a sonnet
- Quatrain-a four line stanza
 Written in iambic pentameter-meter of a
sonnet; five pairs of an unstressed syllable
followed by a stressed syllable- ten syllables
per line
 Rhyme scheme: ababcdcdefefgg
Shakespearean Sonnet
 Contains a conceit-an image or metaphor likens one
thing to something else that is seemingly very different
(“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”)
 Turn- The sonnet can be thematically divided into two
sections: the first presents the theme, raises an issue or
doubt, and the second part answers the question,
resolves the problem, or drives home the poem's point.
This change in the poem is called the turn and helps
move forward the emotional action of the poem. The
turn often occurs in the ninth line of the fourteen line
sonnet.
Shakespearean Sonnet
SONNET 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
A
Admit impediments. Love is not love
B
Which alters when it alteration finds,
A
Or bends with the remover to remove.
B
O, no! It is an ever-fixed mark
C
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
D
It is the star to every wandering bark,
C
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. D
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
E
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
F
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
E
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
F
If this be error, and upon me proved,
G
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
G
1st quatrain
2nd quatrain
3rd quatrain
Couplet
Examples of Shakespearean Sonnet
 “Sonnet 29”
 “The Hourglass”
Italian Sonnet
 14 lines
 Consists of one octave, one sestet
- Octave- eight line stanza
- Sestet- six line stanza
 Rhyme scheme: abbaabbacdecde
 Also written in iambic pentameter
Italian Sonnet
The Sound of the Sea
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep.
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
A sound mysteriously multiplied
As of a cataract from the mountain’s side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.
A
B
B
A
A
B
B
A
C
D
E
C
D
E
Octave
Sestet
Ode
 Uses heightened, impassioned language
 Addresses some object
 Uses apostrophe- speaker directly addresses an
absent/dead person, abstract quality, or something
nonhuman as if it were present and capable of
responding
 Consists of five sonnets
 Rhyme scheme: terza rima- each sonnet ends with a
couplet; each group of three lines picks up the rhyme
of the second line of the preceding three lines
Terza Rima
O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
a
b
a
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
b
c
b
The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
c
d
c
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill;
d
e
d
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!
e
e
Examples of Ode
 “Ode to the West Wind”
 “Ode to the Caribbean Sea”
 “Ode to Rusty”
Elegy
 Mourns the death of a person or laments something
lost
 Can lament the passing of life and beauty, or
mediations on nature and death
 Formal in language & structure
 Solemn or melancholy in tone
Examples of Elegy
 “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”
 “To My Grammy”
Other Poetry Terms
 Define the following poetry terms.