Spenserian sonnet

The Spenserian sonnet is a sonnet form named for the poet Edmund Spenser.[1]

This article is about the sonnet format. For the nine-line stanza, see Spenserian stanza.

A Spenserian sonnet comprises three interlocked quatrains and a final couplet, with the rhyme scheme ABAB BCBC CDCD EE.[2]

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
"Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain assay,
A mortal thing so to immortalize;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise."
"Not so," (quod I) "let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name:
Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew."

— Edmund Spenser, Amoretti, Sonnet 75

Three prominent features of this sonnet type were known already: Italian and French sonnets used five rhymes; sonnets of Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey used final couplets; and the interleaved ABAB rhymes were in the English style.[3]

References
  1. Eberhart, Lawrence (29 November 2012). "Spenserian Sonnet". Poets Collective. Retrieved 11 March 2020.
  2. "Spenserian sonnet". Merriam Webster. Retrieved 11 March 2020.
  3. A Spenser Handbook. Ardent Media. p. 346.
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