Sonnets III: Spenserian Sonnet

Sonnets III: Spenserian Sonnet
It would be difficult for anyone who reads or writes poetry to have never come in contact with a sonnet of some kind. It is prob

 

Sonnets III: Spenserian Sonnet

It would be difficult for anyone who reads or writes poetry to have never come in contact with a sonnet of some kind. It is probably the most famous poetry form of all in its many variations. The classical poets who wrote sonnets often wrote them in a series that had a larger, more dramatic purpose. However, when writing a sonnet, you need to keep in mind, that each sonnet, even when created to complement others, should have a point and purpose alone.

The Spenserian Sonnet was created by Edmund Spencer and is a mixture of the English and the Italian forms of sonnets. It is comprised of 3 quatrains and a couplet but it has an interlocking rhyme scheme between the stanzas: abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee. It is also written in iambic pentameter.

An example of the Spenserian Sonnet:


Amoretti III: The Sovereign Beauty  by Edmund Spenser
oldpoetry.com/poetry/4909

 

The sovereign beauty which I do admire,
Witness the world how worthy to be praised:
The light whereof hath kindled heavenly fire
In my frail spirit, by her from baseness raised;

 

That being now with her huge brightness dazed,
Base thing I can no more endure to view;
But looking still on her, I stand amazed
At wondrous sight of so celestial hue.

 

So when my tongue would speak her praises due,
It stopped is with thought's astonishment:
And when my pen would write her titles true,
It ravish'd is with fancy's wonderment:

 

    Yet in my heart I then both speak and write
    The wonder that my wit cannot endite.


"One day I wrote her name upon the strand" by Edmund Spenser
oldpoetry.com/poetry/21696

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
Vain man, said she, that dost in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalize!
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eek my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name;
Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.