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Subject - Sonnets

The sonnet is a frequently used poetic form, defined as a 14 line verse typically of five-foot iambics. There are a few standard rhyming schemes that have been used over the centuries:

Italian: ABBAABBA CDCDCD

English: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

Spenserian: ABAB BCBC CDCD EE

Italian Variation: ABABABAB CDCDEE

Within that form poets have found great freedom to present all manner of subjects and moods. Poets' Corner hosts many excellect ones. Some well known ones are noted here, along with many collections comprised solely of sonnets. The rhyming scheme of some sonnets is noted below in brackets.

1. A Sonnet of the Moon by Charles Best

   a beautiful, tender love poem... not really about the moon at all [engl.]; one of Jon's favorites

2. Sonnet XLIII by Elizabeth Barret Browning

   How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
   

3. Death Be Not Proud by John Donne

   death's power is shown to be empty

4. Batter my heart, three-personed God by John Donne
5. The Sound of the Sea by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

   ...foreshadowing and foreseeing
   Of things beyond our reason or control.
   

6. On His Blindness by John Milton
7. Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint... by John Milton

   Milton lets us share his grief, in this vision of his late wife [ital.]

8. Sonnet CXVI: "Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds" by William Shakespeare

   [engl.]

   ... Love is not love
   Which alters when it alteration finds
   

9. Sonnet 39: "Come Sleep, Oh Sleep, the Certain Knot of Peace" by Sir Philip Sidney

   [ital. var.]

10. Amoretti Sonnet LXVIII by Edmund Spenser

    [spens.]

    Most glorious Lord of life, that on this day
    Didst make thy triumph over death and sin
    

11. Wild Peaches by Elinor Wylie
12. Fourteen Sonnets by William Bowles
13. Delia, a cycle of 60 sonnets by Samuel Daniel
14. Holy Sonnets by John Donne
15. Idea by Michael Drayton
16. A Calendar of Sonnets by Helen Hunt Jackson
17. Pictures of the Rhine by George Meredith
18. The Complete Sonnets by William Shakespeare
19. Astrophil and Stella by Sir Philip Sidney
20. Amoretti by Edmund Spenser
21. Sonnets: First Series by Frederick Goddard Tuckerman