Sonnet Essays

We were set to compare 2 war sonnets, which were “The Soldier (By Rupert Brooke) and A Dead Boche (By Robert Graves)”; these 2 poems are completely the opposite of each other including some wording, the structure etc. Here is the first comparison: What the Poem Is Talking About * …

Rupert Brooke’s five sonnets, “Peace”, “Safety”, “The Rich Dead”, “The Dead” and “The Soldier”, known collectively as “1914”, were immensely popular during the First World War, his poems were reprinted, on average, every eight weeks of its duration. Brooke also received great admiration and respect from his contemporaries both during …

The poem “How Do I Love Thee?” from the Sonnets from the Portuguese XLIII is a Petrarchan sonnet of fourteen lines, consisting of an octave and a sestet. It was written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61) in 1845 and was composed for her husband, the renowned Romantic poet, Robert Browning. …

Edwin Morgan’s Glasgow Sonnet No1 is an unconventional sonnet, which explores themes of poverty and urban decay. The deliberate use of ‘sonnet’ in the title is intended to mislead the reader, as the connotations of ‘sonnet’ include love, romance, joy and happiness; this contrasts with the morose themes of poverty …

Love’s many contradicting forms are portrayed in two dramatically different sonnets, Sonnet 43 and Sonnet 29. Though both poems are written in Petrarchan sonnet form, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Edna St. Vincent Millay chronicle two contrasting marriages and their distinct attitudes towards love. Millay’s pessimistic Sonnet 29 depicts unrequited love …

Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV “Batter My Heart Three Personed God” is his earnest plea to his Creator, the Three In One God, The Holy Trinity, Father Son and Holy Spirit, to deliver him from the clutches of evil Satan and ensure his eternal salvation. Donne uses a remarkable simile-“like an …

Shakespeare changed the nature of drama in England. Arriving in London in the last decade of the sixteenth century, Shakespeare began his play-writing career by adapting the forms of already-successful plays – plays about historical characters (both English and Roman), the Senecan ‘Tragedy of Blood’, Romantic Comedy and plots centering …

Written in 1893 and published in the poet’s collection The Rose, ‘When You Are Old’ is one of W.B. Yeats’ (1865-1939) most popular poems. As with many of his works, the poem is influenced by Greek Mythology. In this case, it is the legend of Helen of Troy, which inspires …

This essay concentrates on the portrayal of male heterosexual love within two sonnet sequences. I will be analysing Pamphilia to Amphilanthus by Mary Wroth, and Astrophil and Stella by Sir Philip Sidney. Pamphilia to Amphilanthus and Astrophil and Stella are cohesive in their themes of male hedonism, unpredictability and guile. …

Glory be to God for dappled things – For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough; And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spáre, …