Sonnet Essay Examples

What if your “tallness” was forced to go to war with “coquettish death”? What if your lover left you “lamenting”? What if someone “took” your happiness? In “The Sonnet-Ballard”, Gwendolyn Brooks uses a great variety of word diction, sentence syntax, and personification to emphasize the theme that, the impact of war changes everyone forever including…

Sonnet 72 William ShakespeareSonnet 18Shall I compare thee to a summers day? aThou art more lovely and more temperate: bRough winds do shake the darling buds of May, aAnd summers lease hath all too short a date: bSometime too hot the eye of heaven shines cAnd often is his gold complexion dimmed, dAnd every fair…

Shakespeare, regarded the greatest sonneteer of all time, had taken the untried in form and substance in his sonnets. In his time, sonnets followed the conventional Petrarchan form and content that Shakespeare’s deviation was initially disturbing, but much later was subject of interesting analyses. Petrarchan sonnets dealt with conventional love, but Shakespeare went beyond when…

Like some other literary genres the sonnet in England was imported from abroad. Most probably it was originated in Italy in the 13th century with Dante who wrote a number of sonnets to his beloved named Beatrice. A sonnet is according to M. H. Abrahm, “A lyric poem of fourteen lines that has a specific…

The poem “Holy Sonnet #10” by John Donne is one of the most respected forms of poetry, one of the most difficult to compose and one of the most inspirational to read. Donne uses personification, metaphor and rhetorical question to demonstrate the deep personal meaning of the poem. Donne writes passionately about his feelings towards…

Throughout William Shakespeare’s second sonnet the conflict between age’s faded beauty and youth’s pulchritude is illustrated. While the man who the poet is writing to wears “youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now”, it will someday be a “tatter’d weed, of small worth held” (lines 3-4). While he is young, he still holds the beauty,…

Rossetti conveys a message about an abuse of power in the poem “Cousin Kate”. The “Lord” entices and tempts the narrator to come to his luxurious “palace home”. The use of the word “lured” creates a sense of foreboding, emphasizing his authoritative position. Through his charm and flattery, he manages to seduce the narrator and…

“Who will believe my verse in time to come”, Shakespeare is already setting a disparaging yet urgent tone. “If it were fill’d with your most high deserts? ”, he is worried that in the future no one believes his poetry if he writes what he truly sees and feels of his subject. Shakespeare is concerned…

In this slightly odd sonnet, he compares his beloved to everything under the sun. This was a typical gesture. He makes her seem almost unlovable, but then one sees that to him, her voice is music and everything about her is wonderful. She tops any goddess in her mortal beauty and approachability. Sonnet 130 is…

I.         IntroductionAndrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” and William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 116” are both celebrated poems of love and expression, each avowing the author’s sentiments regarding the relevance of time to this utmost emotion.  However, while both poems discuss time as an important element of love, they operate in extreme concepts of time and its…