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a style of verse, with many varied forms,
the form of shakespeare being as proceeds:
a set of fourteen lines, each meeting norms
of length and stress, with certain rhymes agreed.

exactly five feet are there in each line,
and yes, two syllables in every foot,
the second only stressed. these, when combined,
five iambs form. (guess what i cannot put!)

four stanzas are there, three quite similar,
with four lines each, the rhyming being so:
the endings of the first and third concur,
as do the second and the fourth; although

the last has only two lines to its name,
and, lacking so, both rhymes must be the same.
i was trying to write a sonnet about sonnets today. funny how iambic pentameter can’t be used to write itself.
1) a poem, typically to express feeling of love, 14 lines in length.

2) word used to inform friends that an attractive person is approaching.. more subtle than the phrase it is derived from – “check out the -ss on that!”, and even if they hear you say ‘sonnet’ then you can quickly turn it around to a chat up line regarding meaning (1).
pop-rocks for your mind. deceptive packages that set off unexpected explosions.
the sonnet is a poetic form of fourteen lines — everything else about it has been experimented with.

1. wilfred owen’s anthem for doomed youth:

what p-ssing-bells for these who die as cattle?
only the monstrous anger of the guns.
only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
can patter out their hasty orisons.
no mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,–
the shrill, demented choirs of wailing sh-lls;
and bugles calling for them from sad shires.

what candles may be held to speed them all?
not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
the pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
and each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

2. w. b. yeats’ leda and the swan:

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?