It is written in perfect iambic pentameter, although there are lines in which he cheats a little. This gorgeous sonnet, written to the young woman that Keats loved just before he left England because his health was failing him, expresses the emotions of a man who dearly wanted to be regarded as one of the great poets of all time (which he is), but forced to abandon the great love of his life. Till love and fame to nothingness do sink. Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Their shadows with the magic hand of chance Īnd when I feel, fair creature of an hour, When I behold, upon the night’s starred face, Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain
Let’s look at one of Keats’ great sonnets:īefore my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, In the case of Shakespeare, he wrote much of the dialogue of his plays in iambic pentameter and it sounded perfectly natural to the average playgoer. So, poets like John Milton, John Keats, and especially William Shakespeare understood that they could take advantage of the common rhythms of the English language to convey their messages. This is how English speakers actually talk. Now, the incredible genius and simplicity of this, for English speakers, is that every sentence that we say is a stream of accented and unaccented syllables.
So, basic Iambic pentameter is five iambs strung together. Pentameter is Latin, and comes from the Greek word pente, meaning five. All English words with multiple syllables contain both. An iamb is a meter, or beat, consisting of one unstressed syllable and one stressed one. Iambic pentameter is a metrical rhythm within speech, using stressed and unstressed patterns which occur naturally within everyday English language. But, depending on the organization of the lines and the stress in the rhyme scheme, the poet can cover many aspects of the poem’s subject matter.Ī sonnet, therefore, is deceptively simple. It will always be a poem about one specific topic, or idea, keeping the focus as simple as possible. While it will always have a specific rhyming pattern, a sonnet may be structured in a variety of ways, giving the poet flexibility in how those 14 lines are arranged. A sonnet is a 14 line poem written in iambic pentameter.
Let’s begin with the definition of a sonnet. While it is easier to say what a sonnet is than it is to explain how one works, understanding the simple intricacies of the sonnet will put you well on the path to appreciating the possibilities of English words and their meaning. For centuries, great sonnets have epitomized what we mean when we speak of beautiful language.
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