9 Point Poetry Analysis

1.                                         Sonnet 29:
                                                                William Shakespeare

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heav'n with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself, and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate.

  For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

  That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

1) Dramatic Situation: man telling the story to those who would hear his disdains
2) Structure: consists of 14 lines, written in iambic pentameter, 3 quatrains, and 1 couplet
3) Grammar: written in Old English
4) Tone: depressed, hopeless, fondness
5) Theme: the curative power of love for the man who wallow in miserably destructive self-disdain.
6) Important Imagery: curse my fate, sing hymns
7) Important Words: disgrace, outcast, fate, man, heavens
8) Literary Devices: personification- deaf heav'n; written in the first-person point of view
9) Prosody: the flow of the sonnet is short and simple; even with the shortness of it, the author manages to convey the message

2.                                         Sonnet 106: 
                                                              William Shakespeare

When in the chronicle of wasted time

I see descriptions of the fairest wights

And beauty making beautiful old rhyme

In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,

Then in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best,

Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,

I see their ántique pen would have expressed

Ev'n such a beauty as you master now.

So all their praises are but prophecies

Of this our time, all you prefiguring,

And for they looked but with divining eyes,

They had not skill enough your worth to sing.

  For we which now behold these present days,

  Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

1) Dramatic Situation: probably a man describing the woman's beauty
2) Structure: consists of 14 lines, written in iambic pentameter, 3 quatrains, and 1 couplet
3) Grammar: written in Old English
4) Tone: mellow, calm
5) Theme: immortality of the woman's beauty, but spoke nothing of love
6) Important Imagery: "Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,"
7) Important Words: ladies, beauty, eyes, praise
8) Literary Devices: written in the first-person point of view
9) Prosody: the flow of the sonnet is short and simple; even with the shortness of it, the author manages to convey the message

3.                                          Sonnet 116:
                                                                   William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

  If this be error and upon me proved,

  I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

1) Dramatic Situation: man declaring that love stays the same no matter what to the readers
2) Structure: consists of 14 lines, written in iambic pentameter, 3 quatrains, and 1 couplet
3) Grammar: written in Old English
4) Tone: the tone is strong and confident.
5) Theme: love stays the same; it doesn't change and its "an ever fixed mark."
6) Important Imagery: "star to every wand'ring bark"
7) Important Words: love, unknown, doom, alters
8) Literary Devices: written in the first-person point of view
9) Prosody: the flow of the sonnet is short and simple; even with the shortness of it, the author manages to convey the message