Sonnets and Rhyming
The Sonnet is a European poetic form primarily used by feminists, African Americans, and the progressive working class. As a result, the Sonnet has a history of five hundred years in literature in Great Britain or Ireland. The Sonnet has represented the claims of popular language over learned Latin. In this case, many have used the Sonnet to write about, “the aspirations of an intellectual or artistic meritocracy in a world of inherited power, idealized love, dynastic marriages, the ambitions of aristocrats, women’s longing for autonomy, the soul’s struggle with faith and the fear of death” (Baraka 298). A poet called Jacopo invented the Sonnet in Sicily in the early 1200s. He developed the fourteen-line model that is meant to be sung (sonetto meaning little sound or song). Through this, he combined two Sicilian quatrains rhyming abababab with what is known as a sestet rhyme cdecde.
The Italian Sonnet was written in hendecasyllabic verse meaning lines of eleven syllables. The presence of rhyme marked the form and turning points of the poem. Additionally, the use of these rhymes in the Sonnet helps to stress the importance of the meter. Meter refers to the use of unaccented and accented syllables and these are in particular patterns that poets refer to as feet. The feet are made by marks in a process called scansion. Unaccented syllables are assigned with a breve ( ̆) and accented syllables are assigned with an acute accent ( ́ ). These marks are made over the vowels of the corresponding syllables. Meter is sufficient in Sonnets because it helps to guide the rhythm of the poem.
It can be obtained in the Sonnet, “Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree” by Edna St.Vincent Millay how rhyming at the end of each line guides the poem from the sadness of the winter to the longing the narrator has for spring.
In the third and fourth lines of the poem the author writes, “Loving him not at all. The winter rain/ Splashed in the painted butter-tub outside” (Millay 305). From these lines, the author expresses the season of winter, describing the winter rain as it has gathered in the tub outside of the house. One can take away from this line that the author is describing a cold time of year and even before this line she mentions death. The line before these two reads, “And watched beside his bed until he died” (Millay 305). The word, “died” that takes place at the end of the third line rhymes with “outside” in the fourth, helping to describe a cold time of year that was related to the other character's death in the poem.
Furthering the interpretation, as you continue reading the poem the author creates a shift from discussing winter in the first four lines to describing her longing for spring that takes up the rest of the poem. Following the line about the winter rain splashing the bathtub that stands outside, the next line reads, “Where once her red geraniums had stood,” (Millay 305). The rhyming line after this one reads, “The thin log snapped; and she went out for wood, (Millay 305). After the description of another character dying the narrator is seeming to reminisce about spring, where everything seemed brighter and more lively. The most important description of spring throughout all of this though is that the author was able to be outside, whereas now that is it winter she longs for the blossoming of flowers and the warm air.
The shift in seasons that this Sonnet displays helps to explain the narrator’s feelings towards the given time of year. Rhyming in the poetic form of Sonnet guides the poem through helpful descriptions of scenery and tells the story of the narrator.
Millay, Edna. “Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree”. An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art. Edited by Anne Finch and Kathrine Varnes, U of Michigan P, 2002. p.p. 298, 305.
