Oshwal Academy

Nairobi Campus
Subject: English
Chapter / Topic: Poetry
Year 8 :Week 5
Teacher:
Lesson objectives

• Define a sonnet.
• Describe structure of a sonnet.

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What is a sonnet?

A sonnet is a type of poem

that is comprised of Since sonnets follow a
fourteen lines of verse strict rhyme scheme, they
that follow a specific can sound melodic when
rhyme scheme, depending read aloud.
on the type of sonnet.

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Read the sample below.
• Briefly discuss what it is about, then describe the
structure.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
  So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. Oshwal Academy Nairobi 4
 Summary
Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?
attempts to justify the speaker’s beloved’s
beauty by comparing it to a summer’s day, and
concludes that his beloved is better after listing
some of the summer’s negative qualities.

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 Structure of
the sonnet
• The poem has 14 lines.

• Has three quatrains and a couplet. 

• Lines 1 through 12 follow and ABAB rhyme scheme.

• The final two lines (couplet), the rhyme scheme

shifts: the two lines rhyme with each other.

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 Quatrain
• A quatrain is a piece of verse
complete in four rhymed lines. The
word is derived from the
French quatre, meaning “four.”

•  The word is usually used to refer to

sets of lines that form a stanza. 

• The most popular rhyme schemes of a

quatrain are AAAA, ABAB, and ABBA.
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 Couplet
• A couplet is two lines of verse that follow one
another and are connected by rhythm and
rhyme.

Look at this couplet from English poet Alexander

Pope:
*True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
 * As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.

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Thank
y u!