A sonnet is a fourteen-line stanza form consisting of iambic pentameter lines.

The Italian or Petrarchan sonnet consists of an octave and a sestet. The rhyme scheme is abbaabba and either cdecde or cdcdcd for the sestet.

Sonnet – To Science

by Edgar A. Poe

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!

Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.

Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,

Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?

How should he love thee? Or how deem thee wise?

Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering,

To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies.

Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?

Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?

And driven the Hamadryad from the wood

To seek a shelter in some happier star?

Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,

The Elfin from the green grass, and from me

The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

Death

by John Donne

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.

Form Rest and Sleep, which but thy picture be,

Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go –

Rest of their bones and souls’ delivery!

Thou’rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, 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 English sonnet is a fourteen-line stanza consisting of three quatrains and a couplet. The rhyme scheme is abab,cdcd,efef,gg

Sonnet 18 / William Shakespeare

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;

Sometimes 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 owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest! –

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Sonnet 29 / William Shakespeare

When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d,

Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee; and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love rememb’red such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.