1. Sonnets
A fourteen-line lyric poem, usually written in iambic pentameter (a line of poetry made up of 5 iambs, a metrical foot or unit of measure consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable), that has one of several rhyme schemes
Lyric Poetry – poetry that focuses on expressing emotions or thoughts, rather than on telling a story
A problem is presented, a question is posed, or an idea is expressed, and then a “turn” resolves or answers the question

2. Shakespearean Sonnet Sometimes called the English Sonnet
Used by William Shakespeare
Three quatrains ( 3 four-line units),
each quatrain has related ideas
Ending in a couplet (2 rhyming lines), sums up the poet’s conclusion
Rhyme scheme is usually –
abab cdcd efef gg

3. Spenserian Sonnet Developed by Edmund Spenser
Three quatrains (3 four-line units)
Ending in a couplet (2 rhyming lines)
Usual rhyme scheme –
abab bcbc cdcd ee

4. My love is like to ice, and I to fire;
From Amoretti Sonnet Edmund Spenser
My love is like to ice, and I to fire;
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,
But harder grows the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
Is not delayed by her heart frozen cold,
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
And feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told
That fire which all thing melts, should harden ice,
And ice which is congealed with senseless cold,
Should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,
That it can alter all the course of kind.
The speaker here compares his love
for a woman to fire and her rejection of his love to ice. However, the speaker is puzzled because if his beloved is like ice and he is like fire, how is it that his desire doesn’t melt her coldness but only makes it harder? Also, how is it that his desire isn’t cooled by her coldness but instead grows hotter? The sonnet develops this paradox, concluding that in the case of love, the rules of nature are suspended: fire does not melt ice, nor does ice cool fire.
Paradox – an apparent contradiction that is somehow true

5. Sonnet 75 Edmund Spenser 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 eke my name be wiped out likewise.”
“Not so,” quod 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,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.”

6. Sonnet 73 William Shakespeare
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 seest 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
Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
Through metaphors of autumn, twilight, and glowing embers, the speaker conveys his advancing age and weakening hold on life. In a turn at the end of the poem, the speaker acknowledges that his beloved recognizes his frailties, yet loves him all the more because he’ll soon be gone
The difference between the speaker’s age and his beloved’s is emphasized
Each quatrain develops a deep metaphor – the speaker is compared to a bare tree in autumn, the ruins of a church, the twilight after sunset, and the glowing embers of a dying fire
The turn occurs in l. 13
Parallel Structure – introduces each of the three metaphors “You see in me…”
Tone – Emphasizes the passing of time, making the sonnet poitnant and reinforcing its melancholy tone
This sonet contains three models of life: a season, a day, and a fire (A season and a day fade, but a fire burns providing a glow. So, too the love the speaker invokes in the final couplet does not fade but glows and grows stronger as the end approaches.)

7. Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Sonnet William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! It is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
This sonnet tells what love is and what it is not. Love is not changeable, but fixed and unalterable. Love is also not “Time’s fool”: It doesn’t change as time passes or when beauty fades. In the final couplet, the speaker claims that if he’s wrong about love, then he “never [wrote]”
And no one “ever loved.”
Metaphorically – marriage of true minds
Impediments – taken from English wedding vows (If any of you know cause or just impediment why these persons should not be joined together...)
ll. 2-4, 9, 11 – define love by what it is not
ll. 5-8, 12 define love by telling what it is
Synecdoche – a figure of speech in which a part of something represents the whole (rosy lips and cheeks represent youth and health)
Allusion – l. 10 – alluding to the grim reaper with image of sickle or blade
Personification – Time is personified as the grim reaper
Metaphors – ll. 5-6 – Love is as steady as a seamark
The turn or change of moods occurs between ll. 13 and 14
Could this sonnet be read at a wedding?