Hark!

Let's Look to Bill

William Shakespeare. Need I say more? Let’s read one of his sonnets, and then discuss it, shall we?

What is a sonnet? Sonnets are poems in fourteen lines divided into subgroups, or quatrains. The second and fourth lines of each quatrain rhyme, and the two concluding lines form its own subgroup, which also rhyme. Each line is supposed to have ten syllables.

A Shakespearean Sonnet is a little different. Three quatrains with a rhyming couplet at the end. The rhyming scheme is like this abab cdcd efef gg. It is Shakespeare, after all, so of course it is composed in iambi pentameter. da-duh.

Part of the fun of writing a sonnet is the structure, the challenge. I wrote one about my daughter Ruby slaying a dragon on Easter, which you can read here, Ruby and the Dragon.

To the famous bard!

Sonnet 73

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 ruin'd 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 thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.