Sonnet 18

A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter with a carefully patterned rhyme scheme. Few poets have ever truly mastered the art of writing a sonnet. Sonnets are very clear, short, focused projections of a major theme of life. It is an incredibly difficult task to create a masterpiece with such a rigid structure to follow. Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard brought the sonnet form into English poetry in the sixteenth century. They introduced …

…show the death of a season versus his lover everlasting life, due to his poetry. While employing the use of a Petrarchan conceit, he actually is hinting at the inadequacy of such a comparison. By stating that his mistress is “more lovely and more temperate” than a summer’s day, he not only is praising his love, but cuts through the normal tradition to show that humanity and nature can never truly be compared accurately.