So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,Īnd every fair from fair sometime declines,īy chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,Īnd summer’s lease hath all too short a date: Note, by the way, how the poetic turn comes earlier than usual, starting with “But” in line 9: Now, if you want to be traditional, you can write something like Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18. In other words, you don’t have to wait for Valentine’s Day to write a sonnet. Keats expressed his passionate affection for an English translation of Homer! And John Donne wrote Holy Sonnets to God. Wordsworth wrote about his love for the city of London. Although most sonnets are love poems, they don’t have to be romantic.

The last thing you’ll need is some content. Of course, a rigid iambic meter can seem monotonous, and once you’ve mastered the technique you can play with the rhythm by introducing minor variations here and there. They always say that beauty is skin deep … Just put five iambs together and you’ll have iambic pentameter (penta means five): First, an iamb consists of two syllables, where the first is unstressed and the second stressed: Most sonnets are written in iambic pentameter. The Shakespearean sonnet often has the poetic turn a little later, usually after all three quatrains (4 line stanzas) are finished. The poetic turn (or volta) refers to the change in direction, where the poet comes up with a creative and often surprising ending. The Petrarchan sonnet is made up of two sections, with the octave (8 lines) describing some problem or tension, and the sestet (6 lines) providing a resolution. The most common forms are the Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnets:Īs you can see, although every sonnet has 14 lines, the structure varies quite a bit. Rhyme Schemeįirst you’ll need to pick the rhyme scheme. So if you are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for love (in this case an hour or two of your time), here’s how you write a proper sonnet. Surely anyone who is willing to spend that much time on a poem deserves a chance! Given its complex rhythm and rhyme scheme, just getting the form right shows a certain amount of dedication. If you really mean business, you write a sonnet. You could buy roses or chocolate, but that’s like cheating. The sonnet is the ultimate expression of love.

Iambic pentameter shakespeare sonnet