Today we are going to look at variations on a single form, the sonnet. You have three jobs. First, read the poems assigned for your group, plus the poems typed out below. Second, for each of the poems in your group, determine these four things: 1)Is the poem generally in iambic pentameter and are there fourteen lines? If not, what liberties did the poet take (different number of lines? different number of feet per line? different kind of feet?) 2. Is the poem presented with physical subdivisions (space between parts) or as one block? If the former, what are the subdivisions? 3. What is the rhyme scheme of the poem? 4. Is there a turn of thought in the poem, the kind of change that might be marked with a "but" or "yet" or perhaps a colon (:) to indicate that all the rest of the poem just led up to the part that follows the colon? If so, where?

All the poems listed were consciously related to the traditional sonnet form by the poets who wrote them, even when the poet chose not "obey" all the expected patterns. After you have answered the (possibly) boring questions above, your third job is to answer this one, for ONE of the poems (your choice): what does the poet get from associating his/her poem with the sonnet tradition, in this particular instance? In other words, the poet who chooses to write a sonnet knows that most readers will be familiar with other sonnets. Why would s/he want you to remember them while reading her/his poem?

Group I: Last names A-F; Group II Last Names G-K III Last Names L-R IV Last Names S-V

Group I: in SC:

"Whoso List to Hunt" (20)
"Death Be Not Proud" (185)
"When I Have Fears" (431)
also
"If Thou Must Love Me" (below)
"Another Dark Lady" (MA 251)
"A Virginal" (MA338)
"If We Must Die (TW 91)

Group II: in SC:

"Loving in Truth" (95)
"When I consider" (250)
"Shakespeare" (475)
also
"Remember" (below)
"The Good Man Has No Shape" (MA305)
"next to of course god america i" (MA459)
"Frederick Douglass" (TW147)

Group III. in SC:

Sonnet 29 (128)
"Surprised by Joy" (362)
"Lucifer in Starlight" (489)
also
"Leda and the Swan" (below)
"Good Ships" (MA391)
"The End of the World" (MA436)
"My Dreams, My Works" (TW170)

Group IV: in SC:

Sonnet 129 (144)
"Ozymandias" (468)
"The Wind-hover"(514)
also
"Single Sonnet" (below)
"And You As Well Must Die, Beloved Dust" (MA429);
"Words" (MA520)
"Sunflower Sonnet #2 (TW 325)

ADDITIONAL SONNETS

Christina Rossetti, "Remember" (1849)

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 afterward remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, If Thou Must Love Me (1850)

If thou must love me, let it be for naught
Except for love's sake only. Do not say,
'I love her for her smile--her look--her way
Of speaking gently,--for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'--
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee--and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry:
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby.
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower,
And Agamemnon dead.
                                       Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power,
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

Now, you great stanza, you heroic mould,
Bend to my will, for I must give you love:
The weight in the heart that breathes, but cannot move,
Which to endure flesh only makes so bold.

Take up, take up, as it were lead or gold
The burden; test the dreadful mass thereof.
No stone, slate, metal, under or above
Earth, is so ponderous, so dull, so cold.

Too long as ocean bed bears up the ocean,
As earth's core bears the earth, have I borne this;
Too long have lovers, bending for their kiss,
Felt bitter force cohering without motion.

Staunch meter, great song, it is yours at length,
To prove how stronger you are than my strength.