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ORTHOMETRY. |
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admits of three pairs of rhyme, the first and fourth lines, the second and fifth, and the third and sixth. This arrangement may be illustrated as forlows, the letters a, b, c, d, e representing the rhymes in succession:
Octave a, b, b, a—a, b, b, a. Sestet c, d, e —c, d, e.
The subject matter of the poem should consist of one idea, or one emotion elaborately and continuously wrought out throughout, and complete in itself. The principal idea should be stated in the first quatrain, and illustrated and elaborated in the second; then follows a pause. In each of the two tercets it should be again treated differently, and brought to a close with a dignity fully equal to the opening note, combined with epigra-matic force.
The following example is constructed on the pure Petrarchan model, and is an ingenious and amusing illustration of the build of the sonnet itself. It is an English version of Lope de Vega's Sonnet on the Sonnet, by Mr. James Y. Gibson:
To write a sonnet doth my Julia press me;
I've never found me in such stress or pain ;
A sonnet numbers fourteen lines, 'tis plain, And three are gone ere I can say, God bless me I
I thought that spinning lines would sore oppress me, Yet here I'm midway in the last quatrain : And if the foremost tercet I begin,
The quatrains need not any more distress me. |
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