1. The Sonnet

2. The Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet
Contains 14 lines
The Italian Sonnet can be divided into two parts:
Octave with 8 lines
Sestet with 6 lines

3. The Octave presents the argument/theme of the sonnet.
The Sestet presents the conclusion/ solution of the sonnet.
Rhyme Scheme:
ABBA ABBA CDC CDC

4. The English or Shakespearean Sonnet
Contains 14 lines
The English sonnet can be divided into two parts:
3 Quatrains with 12 lines
A Rhyming Couplet of 2 lines

5. The Quatrains present the argument/theme of the sonnet.
The Rhyming Couplet presents the conclusion/solution to the sonnet
Rhyme Scheme:
ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

6. Meter and Rhythm Iambic: metrical foot consisting of two syllables
An unstressed ( u ) followed by a stressed ( `)
Pentameter: line of verse consisting of five metrical feet (or five beats)
The most commonly used line in English poetry.

7. 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,  5 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. 

8. Basically…What does the poem mean? How can you prove/support it?
Write an analysis of the following poem. Your analysis should consist of a unified interpretation of the poem drawing directly upon its literary elements. Among the elements that you might choose to discuss are imagery, structure, figurative language, tone, formal qualities (including syntax, stanza, and lineation), rhythm, and sound.
Basically…What does the poem mean? How can you prove/support it?

9. Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, 5
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

10. SONNET 73
That time of year thou may'st 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,  5 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 perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

11. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time. When wasteful war shall statues overturn, 5 And broils root out the work of masonry, Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory. 'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room 10 Even in the eyes of all posterity That wear this world out to the ending doom. So, till the judgment that yourself arise, You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.

12. When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced The rich proud cost of outworn buried age; When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed, And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; When I have seen the hungry ocean gain 5 Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the watery main, Increasing store with loss, and loss with store; When I have seen such interchange of state, Or state itself confounded to decay; 10 Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate That Time will come and take my love away. This thought is as a death which cannot choose But weep to have that which it fears to lose.