RHYME AND RHYTHM IN POETRY
(c) The Spenserian stanza like the preceding two stanza forms discussed above has iambic pentameter lines. However, the last line is an Alexandrine. Edmund Spenser devised it for Tlze Faerie Queene. In the nineteenth century Keats employed it brilliantly for Eve of St. Agnes and Shelley for Adonais. The nine lines rhyme a.b a b b c b c c. You notice that the b sound recurs 4 times and c three. The pattern is intricate and poems in this stanza form are slow-moving.
(d) The Sonnet was originally a stanza’uskd by the Sicilyan school &cburt poets in the thirteenth century. Frpm there it went to Tuscany where it reached its highest . , expression in the poetryof Petrarch ( 1304 – 74 ). He wrote’314 sonnets idealizing his beloved aura.
In England it was Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (15 17-47) dnd Sir Thomas Wyatt ‘ (1 503 – 42 ) who experimented with the sonnet form and gave it the structure that Shakespeare used and made famorls. Since then the sonnet has prbved itskf to be one of the most.versatile of the poetic forms. It was used in recent years by ~ikram Setb in his novel The Golden Gate. Long pbems composed of a series of sonnets are called sonnet sequence. Poets such as Edmund Spenset, Sir Philip Sidney, Michael I, Drayton, William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barret Browning, D.G. Rossetti, .W.H. Auden; Conrad Aiken and Rainer Maria Rilke have grouped together sonnets dealing with a particular lady or situation. However, the degree in which they are autobiographical or tell a coherent story is a matter on which opinions diverge.
