Sonnets!

Petrarchan and Shakespearean: Sonnets contain fourteen lines – ALWAYS There are different types of sonnets and we will focus on the above mentioned two.

Petrarchan The Petrarchan Sonnet, also called the Italian Sonnet, contains the following rhyme scheme: ABBA ABBA CDE CDE Notice the above has two quatrains (4 lines) and then is followed by a sestet (6 lines). The sonnet usually is set up in a question-answer format and topics include the pangs of love.

Shakespearean The Shakespearean Sonnet, also called the English Sonnet, contains the following rhyme scheme: ABABCDCDEFEFGG The Shakespearean is noted by the couplet at the end.

Read the next three sonnets and determine if they are Petrarchan or Shakespearean and why.

“To Helene” by Pierre de Ronsard When you are very old, in evening candlelight Moved closer to the coals and carding out your wool, You’ll sing my songs and marvel that you were such a fool: “O Ronsard did praise me when I was young and bright.” Then you’ll have no handmaid to help you pass the night, Spinning while your gossip leads her into lull, Until you say my name and her roused eyes grow full In wonder of your glory in what Ronsard did write. When I am in the earth, poor ghost without his bones, A sleeper in the shade of myrtle trees and stones, Then you, beside the hearth, old and crouched and gray, Will yearn for all that’s lost, repenting your disdain. Live it well, I pray you, today won’t come again: Gather up the roses before they fall away.

“Sonnet 148:…” by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz In the gardens, Celia gazed upon a rose that candid in its haughty ostentation, and bright in tints of scarlet and rich crimson, joyfully its fragile face exposed, and said: “Enjoy the day, fear not the blows of Fate in this too fleeting celebration, the death that on the morrow claims its portion, cannot take from you the joy this day bestows; though the perfume of life fade on the air, and the hour of your passing too soon toll, fear not the death that finds you young and fair: take the counsel that experience extols, to die while beautiful is finer far than to suffer the affront of growing old.”

Sonnet My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks;  And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:    And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare    As any she belied with false compare.