30 Examples of Sonnets

The sonnet it is a limited poetic composition, with a fixed mold. It is composed of fourteen hendecasyllable verses, which are divided into two quartets and two triplets. The rhyme is consonant and, at present, its distribution may vary. There are also sonnets written in Alexandrians.

Is named stanza to the combination or groups of verses that are repeated regularly. The quartet is a four-line stanza. In the sonnet, the rhyme of the quartets is fixed: the first verse coincides with the fourth, while the second and third rhyme with each other. For its part, the rhyme of the triplets may vary.

The triplet is a stanza made up of three verses. In the sonnet, the final triplets have their own rhyme. In the first two verses of both stanzas the rhyme, while the final verses rhyme with each other.

Structure of the sonnet

1 ——————— a
2 ——————— b
3 ——————— b
4 ——————— a

1 ——————— a
2 ——————— b
3 ——————— b
4 ——————— a

1 C
2 C
3 ——————— d

1 C
2 C
3 ——————— d

Other possible metric schemes for the rhyme of triplets are: CDC-DCD or CDE-CDE.

Origin of the sonnet

Although it is not known with certainty when this composition began to be used, the first sonnets date from the Middle Ages. This structure was born in Italy and its use later spread throughout Europe and America.

The themes they develop are very varied. For example: love and heartbreak, joy and sadness, loneliness, among others. In the most classic sonnet, the quartets are used to introduce a problem and the triplets to expose a closure or solution to that conflict.

Examples of classical sonnets

1. Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz

Feliciano adores me and I abhor him;
Lisardo hates me and I adore him;
for whom I don't feel like ungrateful, I cry,
and to the one who cries me tender I don't feel like it.

To whom I most despair, the soul I offer; 5
to whom he offers me victims, I despise;
I despise the one who enriches my decorum,
and to the one who makes contempt, I enrich.

If with my offense I reprimand one,
the other reproaches me offended; 10
and to suffer anyway I come,

for both torment my sense:
what do you ask for what I don't have,
and the one with not having what I ask of him.

1. Garcilaso de la Vega

Like the tender mother that the mourner
son is asking him with tears
something, of which eating,
He knows that the evil that he feels must be doubled,

and that pious love does not allow him 5
that consider the damage that doing
what he asks him to do, he runs,
and bend the evil and appease the accident,

so to my sick and crazy thought,
that in his damage he asks me, I would like 10
remove this deadly maintenance.

But ask me, and cry every day
so much that how much he wants I consent to him,
forgetting his death and even mine.

1. Francisco de Quevedo

It's burning ice, it's frozen fire
it is a wound that hurts and cannot be felt,
he is a dreamed good, a bad present,
it's a very tiring short break.

It is an oversight that gives us care,
a coward, with a brave name,
a lonely walk among the people,
a love only to be loved.

It's an imprisoned freedom
that lasts until the last parasism,
disease that grows if it is cured.

This is the Love child, this is her abyss.
Look what friendship she will have with nothing
he who is contrary to himself in everything!

1. Ruben Dario
   "Of winter"

In winter hours, look at Carolina.
Half huddled, she rests on the couch,
Wrapped in her sable coat
And not far from the fire that glows in the living room.

The fine white angora beside her reclines,
Brushing his snout against Alençón's skirt,
Not far from china jugs
How half a silk screen from Japan hides.

With her subtle filters a sweet dream invades her;
I go in, without making a noise; I leave my gray coat;
I'm going to kiss her face, pink and flattering

Like a red rose that was a fleur-de-lis.
Open your eyes, look at me, with the smiling look of him,
And while the snow falls from the sky of Paris.

1. Federico Garcia Lorca
   "Adam"

To Pablo Neruda, surrounded by ghosts

Blood tree waters the morning
where the newborn moans.
His voice leaves crystals in the wound
and a bone chart in the window.

While the light that comes fixed and wins
white fable goals that forget
the tumult of veins on the run
towards the cloudy coolness of the apple.

Adam dreams in clay fever
a child galloping closer
by the double beat of her cheek.

But another dark Adam is dreaming
neutral moon of seedless stone
where the child of light will burn.

Types of sonnets

The sonnet is a very old form of versification, therefore, as it became popular, it underwent changes and adaptations to different languages ​​and times. From there are derived the different types that retain relation to the original structure, but offer changes in the metric scheme.

• Sonnet. It is a sonnet of minor art, whose verses are not hendecasyllables but octosyllables (or even verses of less than eight syllables). This variant of the sonnet was especially popular in modernism but is not widely used in Spanish. For instance:

Cayetano Fernández Cabello 
"The eloquent orator" (1864)

«Come with me to admire
An eloquent speaker;
(Juan said to Clemente,
Starting the two to walk)
Demosthenes was a downer
And Tulio an impertinent,
Compared to the torrent
Of his unparalleled eloquence.
- «I will have a gift of pleasure,
Clemente said: it's business
That was always to my liking.
And Juan points to the point
A mourning room
And there lying a deceased.

• Acrostic sonnet. The initial of each verse forms an acrostic, that is, read vertically, the letters with which each verse begins form a word or expression.

Patricio de la Escosura 
From the play The Court of Good Retirement (1857) 

Ira from heaven, love, it was your shots:
Son the one who adores an impossible object:
TOrde and his fire, which concealed respect,
BRamando exhales in rapid sighs.
ANDIn vain do they soften bronzes and porphyries
Ltears of pain. Cruel Aleto!
¡Dgood luck! Not a single affection changes,
ANDn both the man changes in swift turns.
Barbarous love, grant hope,
OR that to forget my contempt for him moves me:
Rompe, but, the ties of life:
BAste already suffered to your revenge
ORh! do not listen, love, nor foolish pray:
Nor: ungrateful: never hated. It is very necessary to learn

• Sharp sonnet. Quartets are in the form of an acute octave, that is, two stanzas of four hendecasyllable lines with consonant rhyme, in which the fourth line is acute. In triplets, third parties carry sharp verses and rhyme with each other. For instance:

Anonymous

Like a religious Vesta temple
of my soul the mystery and simulacrum
that inflates the enclosure of sacred respect
It is the sacred fire of love.
The rest... the bronze hall,
the shady forest of evergreen greenery,
the alabaster fountain and the solemn
majestic silence all around.
To nurture the fire, the divine
Virgin of friendship, with an egregious step,
of the pavement by the slabs goes.
Do not steal it, you profane unworthy people,
that sacrilege will not go unpunished:
the avenging ray will touch you.

• Alexandrian sonnet. It is composed of Alexandrian verses. That is, fourteen lines of fourteen metric syllables, each with an accent on the third and thirteenth syllables. For instance:

Ruben Dario
«Caupolicán», Blue (1888)

It is something formidable that the old race saw:
sturdy tree trunk on the shoulder of a champion
savage and fierce, whose stout mace
wield the arm of Hercules, or the arm of Samson.

For a helmet his hair, his chest for a breastplate,
could such a warrior, from Arauco in the region,
Spearman of the woods, Nimrod who hunts all,
hamstring a bull, or strangle a lion.

He walked, he walked, he walked. She saw the light of day
she saw him the pale afternoon, she saw him the cold night,
and always the tree trunk on the titan's back.

"El Toqui, el Toqui!" cries the moved caste.
He walked, he walked, he walked. The dawn said: «Enough»,
and the tall forehead of the great Caupolicán was raised.

• Assonance sonnet. Use assonance rhyme throughout the poem, instead of the rhyme of the classical sonnet. For instance:

Bernardo Ortiz de Montellano
«V», Blue sky death (1937)

This body sealed by inertia,
I live without a voice, absent without meaning,
that to the cry of men does not wake up
and the dream drags its secret fate,
this body, my body, subdued
to the fog more fog of my dead
loneliness, without presence or destiny,
lost the air without knowing the essence;
this body without voice, metal without fire,
hand without farewell that I do not move,
arm, lily of lava and ash,
air without a breath of green tenderness;
this voiceless body is no longer life,
but neither does sleep nor death.

• Sonnet with tail. It uses a broken one every two verses, which can be tetrasyllabic or pentasyllabic, that is, four or five syllables. For instance:

Juan Diaz Rengifo
From Spanish poetic art (1592).

The eyes of the most honest dove,
or from the eighth heaven the stars
glittering:
The forehead of the Aurora, when she appears:
To the pomegranates the beautiful mexillas
similar:
Lips like carmine turned into rubber,
words and wiggles of maidens
not arrogant:
The breast qual made poma,
the feet that rubies that give sparkles,
o Diamonds:
The stature qual of a beautiful one. palm,
and of ivory the white neck, and her hands,
are gifts of this sacrosanct body
of Maria
because the interiors, and the soul,
Come, O sovereign Cherubim
to sing, who can no longer so much
my Talía.

• Continuous sonnet. Only two types of consonant rhymes are available for the fourteen lines, distributed equally. For instance:

Juan Diaz Rengifo
From Spanish poetic art (1592)

Spirited ash, vile mixture,
man of dust, and tears formed,
by divine law condemned to death:
Why don't you stop your madness?

Already begins to cry bitterly,
how much you have angry with God,
the bad life, the wasted time,
if you don't want to see yourself in a hurry.

Calling you is the grave,
narrow place, where will be buried
delight, honor, command and beauty,

and how much in this life is estimated:
The soul is immortal, and it always lasts,
she alone employs your care.

• Sonnet of independent quartets. Each quartet has a different rhyme. For instance:

Blas de Otero
"Far", What about Spain (1916)

How much Bilbao in memory. Days
schoolboys. Gray sunsets,
rainy. Repressed joys,
furtive cinema, peanut, anise.

High terrace, Thursday procession
holy, good friday, holy, holy.
Through Pasagarri the last snows
and by Archanda ferns made weeping.

Old Bilbao, old New Square,
Auger Auger, arcades
next to the Nervión: my ruthless life
and blessed. (The Virgin of the Cave,
let it rain, rain, rain.) Barrizales
of the soul girl and tender and shattered.

• Dialogue sonnet. The composition is in the form of a dialogue, in which two or more characters have a conversation. It is usually humorous. For instance:

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
"Dialogue between Babieca and Rocinante", The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quijote of La Mancha (Part I, Chapter IX) (1605)

B-How are you, Rocinante, so thin?
R-Because you never eat, and you work.
B-Well, what about barley and straw?
R-My master won't leave me a bite.
B-Come on, sir, you are very badly raised,
for your ass tongue outrages the master.
R-Ass goes from the cradle to the shroud.
Do you want to see it? Look at him in love.
B-Is it stupid to love? A-It is not great prudence.
B-Metaphysical you are. R-I don't eat.
B-Complain about the squire. A-It is not enough.
How am I to complain about my illness,
if the master and squire or butler
Are they as naughty as Rocinante?

• Double or double sonnet. A heptasyllable verse is added after each odd verse of the quartets and another after the second verse of the triplets. Therefore, the dubbed sonnet has fourteen hendecasyllable lines and six seven-syllable lines. The added verses must rhyme with the immediately preceding verse. For instance:

Juan Diaz Rengifo
From Spanish poetic art (1592)

Love is an overlapping bond on earth,
sneaky thief,
ponçoña between the sweet honey tucked,
snake in fresh shrunken yeruas,
that gives a mortal wound,
deep in the safe and wide ford:
Lion next to the crouched path,
from hunger fatigued
it sparkles among the straws hidden,
flattery, with which our life dies,
entry without exit,
castle below is mined:
Headpiece of enemies in the mountains,
feigned crocodile lament,
candle without pauilo,
variable roof weather vane;
woolen by twisting a thin thread,
manifest and deleytable deception,
incurable fever,
promises peace, but it is the same war.

• Sonnet with echo. The final word of each verse repeats the end of the previous word, like an echo. It is a version of the sonnet that was popular in the Baroque. For instance:

Lope de Vega
Pastors of Bethlehem (1612)

Blessed is he who in a purchased meadow,
the lonely life hurries pure,
and among the hard crops and vegetables,
without ever having a plow.

He does not go in the gulfs, banished erroneous,
nor in the city with a perjuring voice does he swear,
that neither of the civil madness cures,
nor does he reveal his borrowed state.

In solitude that entertains him, he has,
for blazon the disguised hoe,
bed in his wheat, in his flocks baths.

That, as to have that it suits him comes,
that is everything at the end of the day nothing,
years passes happily without deception.

• Chained sonnet. From the second verse, the first word of each rhymes with the last of the previous verse. For instance:

Juan Diaz Rengifo
«To wisdom», Spanish poetic art (1592)

Would to God, that in you, Wisdom
(Guide of the soul, and heavenly luminary)
I would have used the long day
the cold night, the time, that he lost.

I had with your sweet company
joy in adversity, and whole peace:
see what I did not see when I believed,
that I saw, what I would never want to see.

Overcome from ignorance, poor, and blind
I give you the aged wit
fired from idleness and vain play,

I beg you to receive him, that although it has been
lost by his great unease,
calm must find you surrendered.

• Enumerative sonnet. He does not propose changes in the meter, which is identical to that of the classical sonnet. Regarding the thematic organization, he develops the theme gradually in the first thirteen verses and the denouement only unfolds in the final verse. For instance:

Gabriel Lopez Maldonado
Song book (1586)

Mortal rage that condemns the heart,
in harsh hell, to miserable crying;
poison, that, with insatiable hunger,
you spill and spread through my veins;

raging frenzy, what a mess
the most mature and durable brain;
wrath of heaven, fierce and intractable,
violent jail, rough chains;

monster that ice and fire together
you put in the entrails of you grow up,
ruin and pestilence of the land;

mortal enemy to how many people
the wide world and hell encloses,
When will my misadventures come to an end?

• Sonnet with estrambote. To the classical structure of the sonnet, a bizarre is added, that is, a verse or series of verses included at the end of the poem. The structure of the strambote is usually: a heptasyllable that rhymes with the previous verse and two hendecasyllables that form a couplet. Also called "sonnet caudato", it usually has a humorous tinge. For instance:

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
"To the tumulus of King Felipe II in Seville" (1598)

I vote to God that this greatness scares me
and to give a doubloon for a description!
because who does not surprise and wonder
this famous machine, this wealth?
For Jesus Christ alive, every piece
worth more than a million, and that is stain
may this not last a century!, oh great Seville,
Rome triumphant in spirit and nobility!
I'll bet that the soul of the dead
for enjoying this site today has left
glory, where he lives forever.
This heard a bully and said: «It is true
how much does voacé say, sir soldier,
And whoever says otherwise is lying. "
And then incontinently
stamped the veneer, required the sword
looked sideways, went and there was nothing.

• English sonnet or Shakespearean sonnet. It is made up of three quartets without rhyme and a final couplet. For instance:

Jorge Luis Borges
"The instant", The other, the same (1964)

Where will the centuries be, where will the dream
of swords that the Tartars dreamed of,
where the strong walls they leveled,
where the Adam Tree and the other Log?

The present is alone. The memory
erects time. Succession and deception
It is the routine of the clock. Year
it is no less vain than vain history.

Between dawn and night there is an abyss
of agonies, of lights, of cares;
the face that is seen in the worn ones
mirrors of the night is not the same.

The fleeting today is tenuous and is eternal;
Do not wait for another Heaven, nor another Hell.

• Inverted sonnet. The classical structure is reversed: the poem begins with two triplets and closes with two quartets. For instance:

Ricardo Carrasquilla placeholder image
"Inverted Sonnet", Selected Coplas (1881)

Musa, let's make a sonnet backwards:
that is, let's start the task
for writing the last triplet.

It is necessary to look for some idea;
but I must warn you here, in secret,
that neither of faith nor of hope.

Hope and faith are not in fashion;
charity itself is old-fashioned;
the sacred rights of nothing
only the Gothic people deny them.

Today no evil makes man muddy,
and the grandchildren of the monkey and the cute
they only know the "I know I don't know anything",
and they base all science on doubting.

• Tongue and groove sonnet. Male and female gender words alternate. For instance:

Francisco Luis Bernárdez
From Elemental poems (1942)

The day, which before was dark night,
the day becomes more and more pure;
the night, which used to be a dark day,
It is again an increasingly pure night.
Heaven, which was previously impure land,
Heaven is less insecure again;
the earth, which used to be an impure sky,
It is once again a less insecure land;
since on this day without reproach,
since on this night that is not night,
since in this heaven that banishes,
since in this land that is not land,
the heart, yesterday uninhabited,
it becomes a heart in love again.

• Paired sonnet. The rhyme of the quartets (and sometimes also of the triplets) is organized in couplets and not following the metric described at the beginning. In addition, assonance and consonant rhymes are allowed. For instance:

Alfonso Reyes
From 5 almost sonnets (1931)

Afternoons like this, when have I breathed you?
Loose hair, damp from the bathroom;
farm smell, throat cool,
spring made all flower and water.
The gate was opened and we rode;
the sky was song, caress the field,
and the promise of the rain walked
alive and happy for the high peaks.
Every leaf trembled and it was mine
And you too, from shaken fear
between hunches and lightning.
The stars beat between clouds,
and the pulse of the earth reached us
from the light stride of the horse.

• Polymetric sonnet. The verses have different numbers of syllables. For instance:

Blas de Otero
From In Spanish (1960)

Here ends the first part.
How many papers for what Five hundred.
Five hundred points to the four winds
and -only- one man against all Art.

Ends? Born. Final, aside.
Forty ashen March,
wind,
and finally a fire where you can get angry.
A man. Only? With his I soluble
in you, in you, and in you. Round wall?
Oh no. Us. Wide sea. Hear us
and when the red farellón is blurred,
another, another and another will connect its foliage
green. It is the forest. Yes the sea. Follow us

• Sonnet with repetition. The last word of the verse is repeated at the beginning of the next verse. For instance:

Juan Diaz Rengifo
From Spanish poetic art (1592)

Save the world your skinny fortress,
strength of flesh I do not want,
I want to serve the one in whom I do hope,
I hope it will make my weakness oak.
Weakness in virtue is great vileness,
vileness does not allow a horseman
Cauallero in the blood, not in money,
money that darkens the nobility.
True nobility in God is found
find it he who despises himself,
Pricing God alone in him is honored.
God honors his own, when he is silent,
shut up, because in silence he is helping,
giving patience and honor in dishonor.

• Plexed sonnet. The alternate rhyme (ABAB-ABAB) is applied in the quartets.

Manuel Jose Othon
"Wild Idyll" (1906)

It's my goodbye... There you go, bruna and austere,
across the plains that the embarrassment scalds,
when you see your burning hair,
like a curse on your sword.

In my desolations, what awaits me?
(I can barely see your dragging skirt):
a spring break
and an eternal nostalgia for emerald.

The human earthquake has destroyed
my heart, and everything in it expires.
Bad memories and forgetfulness!

I still see you, and I already forgot your forehead;
just, oh, I look at your back, which one looks
what flees and goes away eternally.

• Retrograde sonnet. The poem preserves the meaning and form of the sonnet, even if it is read in a different direction. For instance:

Juan Diaz Rengifo
From Spanish poetic art (1592)

Sacred Redeemer, and sweet Bridegroom,
pilgrim, and supreme king of heaven,
heavenly path, firm consolation,
dear Savior, funny Jesus:

Pleasant, peaceful, delightful meadow,
fine ruby ​​set, fire in ice,
divine love, patient and holy zeal,
perfect and glorious paragon:

Show of love and charity raised
Lord, you gave the world by making yourselves man,
poor land, and humble to you gathering,

You came man, and God, shelter and life,
our life and misery improving;
it contains such greatness such renown.

• Sonnet of thirteen lines. The last verse is omitted. It is a very popular variant in modernism. For instance:

Ruben Dario
"XIV", Songs of life and hope (1905)

Of a youthful innocence
what to keep but the subtle
perfume, essence of her April,
the most wonderful essence!

For regretting my conscience
it was of a sonorous ivory
a story that was of the Thousand
and One Nights of my existence ...

Scheheraza fell asleep ...
The Vizier was meditating ...
Dinarzarda the day forgot ...

But the blue bird returned ...
But... Nevertheless... Always... When ...

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