How many lines has it? Make out a
scheme of the rhymes: _a b b a_, etc. Notice the change of thought at
the ninth line. Do all sonnets show this change?
EXERCISES
Read several other sonnets; for instance, the poem _On the Life-Mask of
Abraham Lincoln_, on page 210, or _On First Looking into Chapman's
Homer_, by John Keats, or _The Grasshopper and the Cricket_, by Leigh
Hunt.
Notice how these other sonnets are constructed. Why are they considered
good?
If possible, read part of what is said about the sonnet in _English
Verse_, by R.M. Alden or in _Forms of English Poetry_, by C.F. Johnson,
or in _Melodies of English Verse_, by Lewis Kennedy Morse; notice some
of the examples given.
Look in the good magazines for examples of the sonnet.
COLLATERAL READINGS
To the Grasshopper and the Cricket Leigh Hunt
The Fish Answers (or, The Fish to the Man)[11] Leigh Hunt
On the Grasshopper and Cricket John Keats
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer John Keats
Ozymandias P.B. Shelley
The Sonnet R.W. Gilder
The Odyssey (sonnet) Andrew Lang
The Wine of Circe (sonnet) Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The Automobile (sonnet)[12] Percy Mackaye
The Sonnet William Wordsworth
See also references for the _Odyssey_, p.
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