Very First Line Of The Sonnet example essay topic

The Faces of the Sonnet The sonnet may seem at first glimpse to be but a harmless little chunk of words. However, as everyone who looks beyond its diminutive physical appearence knows, there have been sonnets written that have influenced the shape of our history and without which, much of the art we appreciate today might never have been created. The sonnet is certainly more than what initially meets the eye. Its concision makes for an intense concentration of description and feeling. The structure of the form stresses the perfection of the expression; how the description and feeling is communicated and arranged within the fourteen lines. This expression varies depending on the form of sonnet chosen by the poet, and it therefore makes sense that various poets use different sonnet forms in order to express particular ideas and enthusiasms.

The ideas and attitudes articulated are not simply forced into a fourteen-line summary. The poets' emotions about the ideas they are expressing and the feeling they are trying to convey determines what form of sonnet they use and what kind of individual shape they will create within the rigidity of the form. The challenge of the sonnet is trying to express the imagination within the boundaries of the form, while keeping the true meaning of the vision intact. A sonnet is successful when it is able to stay true to the confines of the form and actually uses the limits imposed by the form to make it powerful.

Its beauty lies in how a poet can be at once constrained by the form but simultaneously has all the freedom in the world while within the space of its borders. Although confined by the sonnet's inherent limits, the poet is able to cross a multitude of imaginative boundaries by manipulating the limits so that they work in his / her favor. This unique manipulation of space and language is what makes the sonnet stimulating and powerful pieces of literature as well as beautiful art. William Wordsworth, John Keats, and P.B. Shelley are three poets who worked with the sonnet to express their thoughts and feelings on various subjects.

In examining examples of their sonnets it becomes clear how this poetic form, despite its rigid structure, actually allows for a creation that is made both powerful and personal by the poet's individual style. William Wordsworth used the Petrarchan form of the sonnet to express his thoughts on humanity's disconnectedness with nature in "The world is too much with us". In the first line of the poem, he laments that, "The world is too much with us; late and soon", . The second line begins, "Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers". It is interesting to see how each idea is connected to the other both by how the lines are arranged and by the punctuation. The first line reads as if Wordsworth is saying that the world is too much with us, lately and in the future as he sees it.

It reads this way because it is all contained in the first line. However, due to the comma that separates the first and second lines, it is also read that late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. This brings forth another reading, which implies that late and soon in the day we are getting and spending; there is a feeling of constancy. This kind of subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) multiplicity of meaning that is able to exist within the lines is an example of how the sonnet has a certain flexibility, despite its obvious limits. It is up to the poet to create the interplay. In the last four lines of the octet, Wordsworth uses nature imagery as examples of the greatness that humanity is no longer connected to.

He doesn't use "The Sea" and "The Winds" as metaphors, rather he refers to them explicitly as he builds on his point that. ".. we are out of tune; / It moves us not". This part of the sonnet is where Wordsworth is describing nature in itself and expressing his belief of nature being humanities connection to pure existence. In expressing this belief, he strengthens his argument that the more concerned we are with the "getting and spending", the less we appreciate the real things of beauty and splendor in the world. These first eight lines are Wordsworth's cry of indignation; the burden that is typically expressed in the octet of the patrarchan sonnet. The volta occurs at line 9, in the middle of the line. This is significant for a couple of reasons.

First, the line begins with, "It moves us not". This is the last statement made of the argument made in the first eight lines. It is followed by, "Great God!" . This exclamation can be read to be a reaction to the atrocity of humanity's disengagement with nature. However, directly after the exclamation and in the same line begins, "I'd rather be", which is the lead in to the sestet. Therefore, "Great God!" could also be read as an introduction to the bold proclamation that is made in the next five lines.

The way Wordsworth creates this relationship among the words within this line is another example of how the poet is able to shape and stylize while staying true to the sonnet form. The other significant aspect of where the exclamation "Great God!" falls in the poem is based on the observation that romanticism seeks to reunite man with nature from the inside out. It is interesting to look at this poem with this observation in mind. Wordsworth spends the first eight lines describing the detachment of man and nature, then at the volta there's a shift and he begins to provide some kind of solution which he works out through the rest of the poem. By the last line, there is a sense that there has been somewhat of a reunion, or at least there's a feeling of resolution.

This pattern seems to imitate the notion of man reuniting with nature from the inside out. The poem's moment of ultimate despair is in the middle, and after the shift the poem immediately begins working toward the resolution- a reunion of sorts- and it comes from the inside of the poem and works outward. In the last lines of the poem, Wordsworth also adds a stylistic element by changing to first person narration. He sets up the scenario of humanity's disconnect with nature in the first section, that which he proposes we all are a part of. Then he shifts and the speaker realizes his vision and works out his own solution to the perplexity previously presented.

He goes from speaking about all of humanity to speaking about the desire of just one man. He is justified in doing this in that he believes a poet is "a man speaking to men" (Preface to Lyrical Ballads). In this instance the speaker is a man acknowledging his "sordid boon", desperately seeking a way in which to resolve it, and then expressing the resulting "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" which is this sonnet. In romantic terms, this is how Wordsworth attempts to reunite man with nature from the inside out. Wordsworth also does something noteworthy with the last six lines in that he varies from the traditional cde cde rhyme scheme of the sestet in the Petrarchan sonnet. Instead, he changes to cdc dcd.

This makes for a slightly different sound and a different flow. This variation works well in terms of the way he arranges the last two lines to refer back to "The Sea" and "The Winds" in lines 5 and 6. In referencing Proteus and Triton, he not only personifies the sea and the wind but he also acknowledges that there was a time when God could be seen clearly in nature itself. This aspect may be commentary on the role of organized religion in the society's problems. The way the rhyme scheme progresses as cdc, and then turns inside out as dcd, could also be looked at possibly as another symbol of the romantic theme of finding resolution from the inside out. John Keats's work with the sonnet brings about very different possibilities and avenues to explore.

In his Sonnet: "When I have fears", Keats uses the Shakespearean sonnet form to express the apprehensions he felt due to his own mortal consciousness. The poem consists of three quatrains and ends with a rhyming couplet. The three quatrains all begin with "when", which alludes to his various misgivings that he goes on to address. In the first quatrain, he addresses his fear of death. He expands on it, using agriculture as a metaphor: .".. the full-ripened grain". The harvest is all his "teeming brain" has yet to put forth, and it also represents autumn and its symbolic association with death (as seen in his ode "To Autumn").

In the second quatrain, Keats addresses his the anxiety he felt about his death preventing him from reaching his potential. Nowadays, we would say he wanted to 'reach the stars', and he must have felt similarly as he used celestial imagery to define his emotions. He laments thinking that he may never have the chance to make the "night's starred face" and the "huge cloudy symbols" into poetry and see them for what they are. He progresses into the third quatrain, where he expands on the "when" making it "And when I feel", as he is referring to love in the romantic sense- both being in love and his love of verse. He thinks of "never looking upon" the "fair creature of an hour", which may be the moment where "What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth" (letter To Benjamin Bailey), or perhaps it is Fanny Brawn e, or maybe the inconstant female figures in his life such as his mother. When he thinks of never reaching the level of romantic love which he so desires- an "unreflecting love", completely unselfish whether with a woman or in his writing- he then stands alone.

There is a definite sense of progress in these three quatrains, as if with each he gets deeper into his fears until he reaches the most daunting of all. Also, within the quatrains he uses nature as metaphors for his fears and desires: agriculture / harvest represents death; celestial imagery represents his potential; and the light, misty fairy-creature image represents the untainted love he wants to "relish". The last two lines, the rhyming couplet typically found in Shakespearean sonnets, is where Keats makes his individual mark. This is where many poets would pose a solution to the foregoing quandary, or explain some possible resolution. However, Keats leaves the reader without resolution.

Within the two lines, we are left bereft of the expected ending that seems inevitable judging by the progression of the poem. His own doubt is clear to see, and there is no attempt to explain it. The reader believes that the progression of the poem is leading up to some kind of answer, when in fact the entire time its been working toward the conclusion that he just doesn't have the answer. This moment of non-egotistical suffering represents Keats's ideal of negative capability. The progression of the quatrains and the use of the metaphors to show the experience rather than tell it is also indicative of this principle. Keats takes full advantage of the form of the Shakespearean sonnet to express his apprehensions, especially the ending couplet which is where everything really culminates.

In fashioning the sonnet with his poignant language and incorporating his own poetic philosophy, he goes beyond the inner limits of the sonnet while keeping the dignity of its structure. P.B. Shelley was another poet who experimented with the sonnet form. In "Ozymandias", he creates a powerful sonnet that has no traditional form. The rhyme scheme, ababacdcedefef, doesn't follow any traditional patterns, however, there is a volta at line 9 like in the traditional patrarchan form. The first line seems to be separate from the rest of the poem, as it is the only line not in quotations and it introduces the dialogue. It sets up the context of the rest of the poem. The speaker met a traveler who told him about the statue.

This line is very significant because it gives the reader a sense of his / her placement in reference to the subject of the poem. The reader is learning about the statue from the speaker in the poem, who learned about it from a traveler, and it is unspecified whether the traveler actually saw the statue or learned of it through another person, and then there is the eventual connection to the statue itself. Therefore, there are at least four degrees of separation from the reader to the statue. Most of this information can be taken from just the very first line of the sonnet.

The reader is provided with a sense of legend and mystery. The next thirteen lines are the traveler's tale, in quotations, which in itself makes the sonnet unusual. In line 3, the breaking dots, "desert... Near", seem to be indicative that either the poet forgot a part of what the traveler said, the traveler actually paused, or the poet wants the reader to pause here. It lends another interesting aspect to the poem however because it seems to set the stone legs apart from the visage, as if the description is building up to something. This building of description continues with the expression of the statue's face.

The inclusion that the sculptor "well those passions read" is significant when analyzing the message within this allegory that Shelley is conveying. Ozymandias's "heart... fed" his tyrannical "passions", but the sculptor, with his "hand that mocked them" was the one who was able to interpret the statue. Ironically, it is his work that still remains (though barely) while Ozymandias's works are gone. Additionally, it is the poet who is writing this tale who is able to do the interpreting that will last longest out of Ozymandia's works and those of the sculptor. Words don't crumble, they last.

This in a way refers to the ideas expressed in Shelley's Defense of Poetry. The volta occurs at line 9, where Ozymandias's passions are brought to life through the words in scripted on the pedestal. Here is the realization of the vision; the irony of Ozymandias's words contrasting against the foregoing description of the ruins where they lay. Immediately afterward there is a shift in tone, "Nothing beside remains". The powerful and mighty words exist among crumbled ruins and long, vast stretches of sand. This contrast occurs in two ways.

The first is obvious in that his civilization is long gone and his words of tyranny exist among ruins and nothingness. But also, the way the sonnet is built by the description in the beginning and then crumbles in the end mimics the literal building and crumbling that existed around Ozymandias's words. The sonnet works so that the description in the beginning parallels the movement of the narrative, then the tyrants words are isolated, followed by more description that parallels the nothingness that eventually remains around the tyrants words. Shelley's non-traditional sonnet form works brilliantly to make a powerful statement about the transitory nature of political power and the relative dispensability of humans in the context of history. The poem ends with the image of long, vast sands that "stretch far away" and the contrast of the king's tyrannical words against a backdrop of nothingness.

Shelley expresses his ideas so perfectly and everything is placed so exactly right throughout the poem that when the quotes end, there is no need for anything else to be said. His inventive approach to the sonnet is impressive because it crossed boundaries by carrying his radial vision in the underlying commentary on tyranny and Christianity while offering a non-traditional yet dignified variation of form. The precision of his description and brilliance of the imagery makes "Ozymandias" a masterpiece. In examining these esteemed examples of differing forms of the sonnet, it becomes clear that although this form seems to be limiting, it is actually a very powerful form of expression. Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley, among many others, have proven how this form of poetry is capable of articulating anything that the poet presents it with.

Thoughts and attitudes pertaining to themes such as politics and religion are as feasible as love sonnets. The sonnet is special in that everything must be concentrated into its most perfect and exact expression, and the result can be both beautiful and powerful. Certainly this form of poetry will forever be a solace in a materialistic world, a comfort amongst fears, and will remain steadfast in the face of all to come.