'Fool,' said my Muse to me, 'look in thy heart, and write.

Thus great with child to speak and helpless in my throes,īiting my truant pen, beating myself for spite, Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows Īnd others' feet still seem'd but strangers in my way.

Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburn'd brain.īut words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow Studying inventions fine her wits to entertain, I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,. Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, If ever man were loved by wife, then thee - Anne Bradstreet, To My Dear and Loving Husband. Here are examples: If ever two were one, then surely we. That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,- This is where the word pentameter comes in penta meaning five and meter meaning the number of feet or syllables in a line. The most common meter used in poetry and verse, iambic pentameter consists of five iambs and 10 syllables per line. Here are three very different examples of iambic pentameter in English poetry: Shakespeares sonnet 18 starts Shall I compare thee to a summers day. 'Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, 'Astrophil and Stella 1,' the first of 108 sonnets and songs in Philip Sidney's set, creates the opening scene for this love story. Even though Shakespeare did not invent this sonnet style, he was among the most prolific, writing 154 in his lifetime. Other notable authors include Michael Drayton, Fulke Greville, and, of course, William Shakespeare. In the example below, one of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets, he collapses several words with apostrophes so they fit within the requisite number of ten syllables per line: the two syllables of owest down one for ow’st, the three syllables of wanderest down to two for wand’rest, and the two syllables of growest down one for grow’st.Published in 1591, the sonnet set 'Astrophil and Stella' by Sir Philip Sidney established the form of the English sonnet. Iambic pentameter also de-emphasizes the rhyme at the end of each line, since it falls on one of the regularly accented syllables, therefore giving it no more weight in the line than any of the other accented syllables. This allowed the flow of each line of poetry to seem as familiar as possible to both readers and listeners. Writers in Shakespeare’s era believed that iambic pentameter most closely matched the normal speaking patterns of native English speakers.

Each line is written in iambic pentameter, meaning that each lines contains exactly ten syllables, every other one accented. Shakespeare also followed another rule that was popular during his era but far less now.

Sonnet poems iambic pentameter examples