I. Petrarchan Sonnets or Italian Sonnets
The sonnet, as a poetic genre, began in Italy in the thirteenth century, and, under the later influence of the Italian poet Petrarch, became internationally popular. Petrarch established the basic form of the so-called Petrarchan sonnet Also called Italian sonnet: 14 lines divided into two clear parts, an opening octet (8 lines) and a closing sestet (6 lines) with a fixed rhyme scheme (abbaabba cdecde). Often the octet will pose a problem or paradox which the sestet will resolve. Petrarch also established the convention of the sonnet sequence as a series of love poems written by an adoring lover to an unattainable and unapproachable lady of unsurpassed beauty. The Petrarchan sonnet convention, in other words, established, not merely the form of the poem, but also the subject matter.
"Sonnet 292" from the Canzoniere,
translated by Anthony Mortimer
The eyes I spoke of once in words that burn,
the arms and hands and feet and lovely face
that took me from myself for such a space
of time and marked me out from other men;
the waving hair of unmixed gold that shone,
the smile that flashed with the angelic rays
that used to make this earth a paradise,
are now a little dust, all feeling gone;
and yet I live, grief and disdain to me,
left where the light I cherished never shows,
in fragile bark on the tempestuous sea.
Here let my loving song come to a close;
the vein of my accustomed art is dry,
and this, my lyre, turned at last to tears.
The Shakespearean sonnet consists of three quatrains (four-line stanzas), rhyming abab cdcd efef, and a couplet (a two-line stanza), rhyming gg. Because each new stanza introduces a new set of rhyming sounds, the Shakespearean sonnet is well-suited to English, which is less richly endowed than Italian with rhyming words.
As with the structure of the Petrarchan sonnet, that of the Shakespearean sonnet influences the kinds of ideas that will be developed in it. For example, the three quatrains may be used to present three parallel images, with the couplet used to tie them together or to interpret their significance. Or the quatrains can offer three points in an argument, with the couplet serving to drive home the conclusion
Sonnet 116
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 prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
Sonnet 18
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,
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.
Sonnet 147
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
Th' uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as mad men's are,
At random from the truth vainly expressed.
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
John Donne was born in 1572 in London, England. He is known as the founder of the Metaphysical Poets, a term created by Samuel Johnson, an eighteenth-century English essayist, poet, and philosopher. His wife, aged thirty-three, died in 1617 shortly after giving birth to their twelfth child, a stillborn. The Holy Sonnets are also attributed to this phase of his life.
The term "metaphysical poetry" is used to describe a certain type of 17th century poetry. The term was originally intended to be derogatory; Dryden, who said Donne "affects the metaphysics," was criticizing Donne for being too arcane. Samuel Johnson later used the term "metaphysical poetry" to describe the specific poetic method used by poets like Donne.
Metaphysical poets are generally in rebellion against the highly conventional imagery of the Elizabethan lyric. The poems tend to be intellectually complex, and (according to the Holman Handbook), "express honestly, if unconventionally, the poet's sense of the complexities and contradictions of life." The verse often sounds rough in comparison to the smooth conventions of other poets; Ben Jonson once said that John Donne "deserved hanging" for the way he ran roughshod over conventional rhythms. The result is that these poems often lack lyric smoothness, but they instead use a rugged irregular movement that seems to suit the content of the poems.
For an example of metaphysical rebellion against lyrical convention, one can look at Donne's Holly Sonnet VI, below:
Holy Sonnet VI.
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's deliverie.
Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then ?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die.
The poem personifies death through an extended metaphor. It speaks to death as if poking fun at its history of being known as “mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so” according to the narrator. The speaker even goes so far as to say “nor canst thou kill me.” This ends the first stanza and is much more interesting and off putting than “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” or Let me not to the marriage of true minds” by Shakespeare.
That the punctuation is just as vital to the meaning of the work. In addition to challenging the conventions of rhythm, the metaphysical poets also challenged conventional imagery. Their tool for doing this was the metaphysical conceit. A conceit is a poetic idea, usually a metaphor. There can be conventional ideas, where there are expected metaphors: Petrarchan conceits imitate the metaphors used by the Italian poet Petrarch. Metaphysical conceits are noteworthy specifically for their lack of conventionality. In general, the metaphysical conceit will use some sort of shocking or unusual comparison as the basis for the metaphor. When it works, a metaphysical conceit has a startling appropriateness that makes us look at something in an entirely new way.
In the sonnet above, he last line is what does it for me, though and it was utilized brilliantly in Maraget Edison’s Wit. Some editions of the text present the last line as follows:
In the Gardner edition, it is presented as follows:
As stated in Edison’s play “Nothing but a breath. A comma separates life from eternal life.” Therefore, the metaphysical conceit of the sonnet is that when you die you live forever.
Holy Sonnet IV.
If poysonous minerals, and if that tree,
Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us,
If lecherous goats, if serpents envious
Cannot be damn'd, Alas ! why should I be?
Why should intent or reason, born in me,
Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous?
And, mercy being easie, and glorious
To God, in his stern wrath why threatens hee?
But who am I, that dare dispute with thee?
O God, Oh! of thine only worthy blood,
And my teares, make a heavenly Lethean flood,
And drown in it my sinnes blacke memorie.
That thou remember them, some claime as debt,
I thinke it mercy if thou wilt forget.
Holy Sonnet X.
The sonnet, as a poetic genre, began in Italy in the thirteenth century, and, under the later influence of the Italian poet Petrarch, became internationally popular. Petrarch established the basic form of the so-called Petrarchan sonnet Also called Italian sonnet: 14 lines divided into two clear parts, an opening octet (8 lines) and a closing sestet (6 lines) with a fixed rhyme scheme (abbaabba cdecde). Often the octet will pose a problem or paradox which the sestet will resolve. Petrarch also established the convention of the sonnet sequence as a series of love poems written by an adoring lover to an unattainable and unapproachable lady of unsurpassed beauty. The Petrarchan sonnet convention, in other words, established, not merely the form of the poem, but also the subject matter.
"Sonnet 292" from the Canzoniere,
translated by Anthony Mortimer
The eyes I spoke of once in words that burn,
the arms and hands and feet and lovely face
that took me from myself for such a space
of time and marked me out from other men;
the waving hair of unmixed gold that shone,
the smile that flashed with the angelic rays
that used to make this earth a paradise,
are now a little dust, all feeling gone;
and yet I live, grief and disdain to me,
left where the light I cherished never shows,
in fragile bark on the tempestuous sea.
Here let my loving song come to a close;
the vein of my accustomed art is dry,
and this, my lyre, turned at last to tears.
II. Shakespearean Sonnets or English Sonnets
The Shakespearean sonnet consists of three quatrains (four-line stanzas), rhyming abab cdcd efef, and a couplet (a two-line stanza), rhyming gg. Because each new stanza introduces a new set of rhyming sounds, the Shakespearean sonnet is well-suited to English, which is less richly endowed than Italian with rhyming words.
As with the structure of the Petrarchan sonnet, that of the Shakespearean sonnet influences the kinds of ideas that will be developed in it. For example, the three quatrains may be used to present three parallel images, with the couplet used to tie them together or to interpret their significance. Or the quatrains can offer three points in an argument, with the couplet serving to drive home the conclusion
Sonnet 116
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 prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
Sonnet 18
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,
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.
Sonnet 147
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
Th' uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as mad men's are,
At random from the truth vainly expressed.
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
III. Metaphysical Poetry and the work of John Donne
John Donne was born in 1572 in London, England. He is known as the founder of the Metaphysical Poets, a term created by Samuel Johnson, an eighteenth-century English essayist, poet, and philosopher. His wife, aged thirty-three, died in 1617 shortly after giving birth to their twelfth child, a stillborn. The Holy Sonnets are also attributed to this phase of his life.
The term "metaphysical poetry" is used to describe a certain type of 17th century poetry. The term was originally intended to be derogatory; Dryden, who said Donne "affects the metaphysics," was criticizing Donne for being too arcane. Samuel Johnson later used the term "metaphysical poetry" to describe the specific poetic method used by poets like Donne.
Metaphysical poets are generally in rebellion against the highly conventional imagery of the Elizabethan lyric. The poems tend to be intellectually complex, and (according to the Holman Handbook), "express honestly, if unconventionally, the poet's sense of the complexities and contradictions of life." The verse often sounds rough in comparison to the smooth conventions of other poets; Ben Jonson once said that John Donne "deserved hanging" for the way he ran roughshod over conventional rhythms. The result is that these poems often lack lyric smoothness, but they instead use a rugged irregular movement that seems to suit the content of the poems.
For an example of metaphysical rebellion against lyrical convention, one can look at Donne's Holly Sonnet VI, below:
Holy Sonnet VI.
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's deliverie.
Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then ?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die.
The poem personifies death through an extended metaphor. It speaks to death as if poking fun at its history of being known as “mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so” according to the narrator. The speaker even goes so far as to say “nor canst thou kill me.” This ends the first stanza and is much more interesting and off putting than “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” or Let me not to the marriage of true minds” by Shakespeare.
That the punctuation is just as vital to the meaning of the work. In addition to challenging the conventions of rhythm, the metaphysical poets also challenged conventional imagery. Their tool for doing this was the metaphysical conceit. A conceit is a poetic idea, usually a metaphor. There can be conventional ideas, where there are expected metaphors: Petrarchan conceits imitate the metaphors used by the Italian poet Petrarch. Metaphysical conceits are noteworthy specifically for their lack of conventionality. In general, the metaphysical conceit will use some sort of shocking or unusual comparison as the basis for the metaphor. When it works, a metaphysical conceit has a startling appropriateness that makes us look at something in an entirely new way.
In the sonnet above, he last line is what does it for me, though and it was utilized brilliantly in Maraget Edison’s Wit. Some editions of the text present the last line as follows:
And Death shall be no more; Death thou shalt die!
In the Gardner edition, it is presented as follows:
And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die.
As stated in Edison’s play “Nothing but a breath. A comma separates life from eternal life.” Therefore, the metaphysical conceit of the sonnet is that when you die you live forever.
Holy Sonnet IV.
If poysonous minerals, and if that tree,
Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us,
If lecherous goats, if serpents envious
Cannot be damn'd, Alas ! why should I be?
Why should intent or reason, born in me,
Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous?
And, mercy being easie, and glorious
To God, in his stern wrath why threatens hee?
But who am I, that dare dispute with thee?
O God, Oh! of thine only worthy blood,
And my teares, make a heavenly Lethean flood,
And drown in it my sinnes blacke memorie.
That thou remember them, some claime as debt,
I thinke it mercy if thou wilt forget.
Holy Sonnet X.
My pilgrimage's last mile, and my race
Idly, yet quickly run, hath this last pace,
My span's last inch, my minute's latest point,
And gluttonous death will instantly unjoint
My body and soul, and I shall sleep a space,
But my ever-waking part shall see that face,
Whose fear already shakes my every joint.
Then, as my soul to heaven her first seat takes flight,
And earth-born body in the earth shall dwell,
So fall my sins, that all may have their right,
To where they're bred and would press me to hell.
Impute me righteous, thus purged of evil,
For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devil.
