Sonnet

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A Sonnet is a kind of poem. It is 14 lines long and is written in rhyme.

The sonnet first appeared in Italy during the Renaissance. The Italian poet Petrarch was famous for his sonnets. It became common for poets to write sonnets in connected series, called "sonnet sequences," to tell a story, often a story about a love affair. Poets in other countries quickly adopted the sonnet. William Shakespeare wrote the most famous sonnets in English literature, though other poets of his time, like Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, and Samuel Daniel, wrote sonnet sequences of their own.

Among later English poets, John Keats was famous for his sonnets, though many other poets of his era also wrote them. The rigid rhyme scheme of the sonnet went out of fashion in poetry during the twentieth century; but a few modern poets still write them sometimes. Edna St. Vincent Millay was one modern poet writing in English who often worked in the sonnet form.

Different poets have used different patterns of rhyme in their sonnets. In most sonnets in English, the first twelve lines fit into three sets of four; the last two lines normally rhyme together, and make up a "rhymed couplet" that is a sort of conclusion to the poem. Yet other patterns, like eight lines followed by six lines, are also used.

The letters of the alphabet are used to show the pattern of rhyme, or "rhyme scheme," in the 14 lines in a sonnet. The rhyme schemes

• a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g
• a-b-b-a, c-d-d-c, e-f-f-e, g-g

are two of the most common.