Compare the content, style, and language of two pre-twentieth century sonnets

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Claire Weller 11E                                                                                2nd December

Mrs Taylor                                                                                     Centre no. 52433

Candidate no. 7144

Assignment:

Compare the content, style, and language of two pre-twentieth century sonnets

There are two types of sonnets, Petrarchan and Shakespearian.

The Shakespearian sonnets are famous throughout the world today.  These comprise of three quatrains and a concluding heroic couplet.  The quatrains rhyme either ABAB CDCD EFEF, or ABBA CDDC EFFE; the couplet will be GG.  An example of the first rhyme scheme is Charlotte Smith’s, To the moon:

Queen of the silver bow! –by thy pale beam,

Alone and pensive, I delight to stray,

And watch thy shadows trembling in the stream,

Or mark the floating clouds that cross thy way.

And while I gaze, thy mild and placid light

Sheds a soft calm upon my troubled breast;

And oft I think-fair planets of the night,

That in thy orb, the wretched may have rest:

The sufferers of the earth perhaps may go,

Join now!

Released by death-to thy benignant sphere;

And the sad children of Despair and Woe

Forget, in thee, their cup of sorrow here.

Oh! That I soon may reach thy world serene,

Poor wearied pilgrim-in this toiling scene!

This poem is about the way in which the poet, Charlotte Smith, portrays her thoughts and feelings of the moon and also to life. ‘She says that the moon helps to ease all the worry and misery of the unhappy, just by being there and giving hope of a peaceful existence in death.  As you can see, the language seems very old ...

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