A Petrarchan sonnet is also often referred to as an Italian sonnet and can be divided into one set of eight lines, or octet, and one set of six, known as a sestet. It is a fourteen-line Petrarchan sonnet that is contained within one block of text. ‘ Holy Sonnet 7’ by John Donne contains a speaker’s description of Judgment Day and an appeal to God to forgive him for his sins. Holy Sonnets: At the round earth’s imagin’d corners, blow by John Donne
The city may be, the poem suggests, an extension of nature itself. While they are different they are also so similar that it is hard to tell them apart. While looking out over his city the speaker compares the natural world to the city that is situated within it. It is quiet and dawn is just touching the horizon.
In this poem, Wordsworth provides the reader with the words of a speaker a looks out over London on an early morning.
See Thomas Wyatt’s “Whoso List to Hunt, I Know Where Is an Hind” and John Donne’s “If Poisonous Minerals, and If That Tree.” Wyatt and Surrey developed the English (or Shakespearean) sonnet, which condenses the 14 lines into one stanza of three quatrains and a concluding couplet, with a rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG (though poets have frequently varied this scheme see Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth”). The octave’s rhyme scheme is preserved, but the sestet rhymes CDDCEE. John Milton’s “When I Consider How my Light Is Spent” and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How Do I Love Thee” employ this form. The Italian sonnet is an English variation on the traditional Petrarchan version. The Petrarchan sonnet, perfected by the Italian poet Petrarch, divides the 14 lines into two sections: an eight-line stanza (octave) rhyming ABBAABBA, and a six-line stanza (sestet) rhyming CDCDCD or CDECDE. There are many different types of sonnets. Literally a “little song,” the sonnet traditionally reflects upon a single sentiment, with a clarification or “turn” of thought in its concluding lines. A 14-line poem with a variable rhyme scheme originating in Italy and brought to England by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, earl of Surrey in the 16th century.