The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. For an analysis of how the sonnet form works, check out our commentary on Percy Shelley’s classic Romantic poem ‘Ozymandias’ and our analysis of the war sonnet ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’. And if you’d like to read more sonnets, we’d recommend this excellent anthology: The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English. Scroll down the webpage on the link provided above to read the poem.ĭiscover more interesting things about the sonnet in our post about the history of the sonnet form here. The final line is especially good for the way it renovates two old cliches, instilling them with new poignancy. Now the poet, middle-aged and mourning the death of his father, has a new, touching perspective on things. This poem sees the poet recalling family holidays to Blackpool (hence ‘Illuminations’ – though the title resonates with deeper meanings too), during which the young poet-to-be would be too busy playing the arcade games to spend time with his father. (Stephen Spender described them as being the kind of poetry he’d been waiting his whole life to read.) ‘Illuminations I’ is one of the most accomplished and moving examples, though Harrison wrote many poignant and well-crafted sonnets, especially about his parents. You can find more classic sonnets by women here.įollowing Victorian poet George Meredith’s innovation of the 16-line sonnet, Tony Harrison wrote a sonnet sequence in which many of the poems utilise this extended form. This poem, first published in 1932, is notable for its frank expression of female desire: a Petrarchan sonnet that turns the male idea of courtly love on its head, it describes the poet’s physical attraction to somebody, rather than an intellectual connection with them. Vincent Millay, ‘ I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed‘. The poem is dedicated ‘To Christ Our Lord’, and Hopkins likens the majesty of the bird to the grace of God.ĩ. This means that his sonnets, although they comprise the standard fourteen lines, often have many more than ten syllables in a line – as is the case in this classic sonnet about a kestrel in flight. Hopkins’s most distinctive feature is the ‘sprung rhythm’ he employs in his poetry, which means the rhythm and metre of his poems are often unpredictable and irregular, in order to capture human speech more faithfully. In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,Īs a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-ĭom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding It is this second part of the poem’s ‘argument’ that saves it from being overly sentimental.Ĩ. In the sonnet, Rossetti requests that the addressee of the poem remember her after she has died, but she goes on to add that it would be better for her loved one to forget her and be happy than to remember her and be sad. It was written in 1849 but not published until 1862 when it appeared in Rossetti’s first volume, Goblin Market and Other Poems. Written by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) when she was still a teenager, ‘Remember’ is a sonnet about mourning and remembrance.

When you can no more hold me by the hand, (This is the sort of thing a Metaphysical Poet like John Donne had done in his poetry in the early seventeenth century.) The final six-line unit (or sestet) of the poem then likens the poet’s experience of ‘discovering’ Homer to the discovery of a new planet (sure enough, the planet Uranus had been discovered by William Herschel in 1781) and to a Spanish conquistador’s sighting of the Pacific ocean. That is, until he encounters George Chapman’s English translation of Homer, at which point the world of the ancient Greek poet is suddenly and magically opened up to him.

Keats could not appreciate Homer because he cannot read Greek. 1559-1634), likening the experience to that of an astronomer discovering a new planet or an explorer sighting an unknown land.

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,Īnd many goodly states and kingdoms seen Ĭomposed when Keats was just 20 years of age, this is one of his most widely anthologised sonnets. The poem focuses on Keats’s initial encounter with an English translation of Homer’s poetry by George Chapman (c.

Sonnet examples by students about rain