Introduction to the Sonnet III: Rhyme

Sonnets rhyme. There are those benighted souls who disagree, but since this is my blog, and the weight of history is largely on my side, we can ignore them for the moment. Sonnets rhyme, and what is more, they rhyme in predictable ways; a sonnet will not have its first line remain unrhymed until the last line, for instance. With that said, sonnets do not have to adhere to a single rhyme scheme; and here I will present some of the most common and most interesting rhyme schemes available for the sonnet.

Probably the most familiar sonnet rhyme scheme is the English, or Shakespearean, sonnet. The rhyme scheme for this type of sonnet is usually given as ABABCDCDEFEFGG, where each letter represents a different rhyme sound. This is not strictly accurate, although the overall effect given of having three quatrains of alternating rhyme and a final couplet is correct. Although many English sonnets do have seven different rhyme sounds, a sonnet with fewer rhyme sounds still following the overall pattern is also acceptable: ABABCDCDEAEACC is a perfectly good English sonnet rhyme scheme for example, even if a couple of the rhymes are repeated. AAAA (or the like) is discouraged, however, as alternation of rhyme is an important part of the English sonnet. The last couplet often, but not always, undercuts or somehow reverses the effect of what has been built up in the previous twelve lines. This can be a nice effect, but is not necessary.

Shakespeare's sonnets (unsurprisingly, given the name) tend to follow this pattern, as do many, many others. As an example, however, I will give a sonnet by Shakespeare's contemporary, Michael Drayton, from his sonnet sequence "Idea," sonnet 61:

Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part;

Nay, I have done, you get no more of me,

And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart

That thus so cleanly I myself can free.

Shake hands forever, cancel all our vows,

And when we meet at any time again,

Be it not seen in either of our brows

That we one jot of former love retain.

Now, at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,

When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,

When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,

And Innocence is closing up his eyes,

Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over

From death to life thou mightst yet him recover.

The other most common sonnet rhyme scheme is the Italian, or Petrarchan, sonnet, which is the form used by Francesco Petrarca, or Petrarch, the original popularizer of the sonnet form in Italian. This form is divided not into quatrains with a final couplet, but into two halves, an "octave" of the first eight lines and a "sestet" of the last six. The octave always has the rhyme scheme ABBAABBA; the rhyme scheme in the sestet is more flexible, although it never includes the A or B rhyme sound. The most common sestet rhyme scheme are CDCDCD and CDECDE, but almost anything goes so long as there are no unrhymed lines. Traditionally the point of division between the octave and sestet marks a turn, a change in the poem's approach usually associated with a re-examination or rejection of the idea presented in the octave.

Petrarch's poems are in Italian; since I would prefer to give examples in English, here is a poem by Christina Rossetti, a Victorian poet, entitled "Remember." Her rhyme scheme is ABBAABBACDDECE.

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half-turn to go yet, turning, stay.

Remember me when no more, day by day,

You tell me of our future that you planned:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then, or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that I once had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

There are also other rhyme schemes that can be used in a sonnet, as many as can be imagined so long as every line is rhymed and there is not so much space between the rhymed lines that the existence of the previous line is forgotten (ABCBCDEDEFGFGA might be hard to hold together, for instance). I will give only one example of another rhyme scheme, Percy Bysshe Shelley's great "Ozymandias." His rhyme scheme is ABABACDCEDEFEF.

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passion read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.