Styles and Techniques: Sonnet

The sonnet...perhaps the most beautiful of all poetry styles. They usually contain stories of love and/or philosophy. Shakespeare, perhaps the most highly esteemed of all poets, wrote 154 sonnets in all, all of them with a specific layout.

English (or "Shakespearean") sonnets consist of fourteen lines. Three quatrains, followed by a concluding couplet. The rhyming scheme is as follows.

A-B-A-B

C-D-C-D

E-F-E-F

G-G

For example:

Dizzy summer day's delight

Impassioned by her fervent stare

Heat by day and fire by night

Enslaved by an angel fair

Blinded by her casual beauty

The world dimmed and forged bliss

Fulfilling neither pride nor duty

Merely the thirst for her half-hearted kiss

Winter lapsed in peals of thunder;

Turned to hail what once was rain

And though this heart was torn asunder

Broken memories remain

If she would but release mine heart

The ice would fall, the cold depart

~ Adam B.