Astrophil and Stella #1, Philip Sidney

[lnhammer]

The line-length for sonnets is usually the default line-length for the language it's written in -- hendecasyllables in Italian, alexandrine in French, iambic pentameter in English, and so on. Usually, but not always, and just as poets have always played with words, so they have with forms. Phillip Sidney's cycle Astrophel and Stella was experimental in so many ways, above and beyond the obvious one of being the first sonnet cycle in English: not only does the opening play merry heck with the conventions of renaissance rhetoric, it's in hexameter:


Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That the dear She might take some pleasure of my pain:
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,
    I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain:
Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sun-burned brain.
    But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay,
Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows,
And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
        Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
        "Fool" said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart and write."


What line-lengths and meters other than iambic pentameter do you consider acceptable in a sonnet? Do the lines always have to be the same length? Can you provide examples?

---L.

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There are many different celebrations and observances that happen on the last day of October and the first day of November, almost all of which focus on the thinning of veil between the world of the dead and the world of the living. Halloween, All Saint's Eve/Day, All Hallows Eve/Day, Samhain, Día de los Muertos, these are just some of the names used to describe the end of October and the beginning of November.

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