Sonnet (Petrarchan / Italian)
Rules quoted from the poets.org glossary; examples only from public-domain poems.
The rules, quoted
Traditionally, the sonnet is a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter
the Petrarchan sonnet is divided into two stanzas, the octave (the first eight lines) followed by the answering sestet (the final six lines).
The tightly woven rhyme scheme, abba , abba , cdecde , or cdcdcd
a turn, or volta, occurs between the eighth and ninth lines.
Our explanation written by Tale of the Muse
In plain terms, a Petrarchan sonnet is fourteen lines of iambic pentameter split eight and six: the octave rhymes abba abba, and the sestet uses cdecde or cdcdcd. The turn, or volta, comes between lines eight and nine, so the sestet answers what the octave sets up. The public-domain example below shows that shape; the glossary, not the example, supplies the rules.
Our plain-language restatement of the glossary rules above. It adds no facts of its own.
A public-domain example
Public domain in the US: the ebook's front matter prints 1902, before 1931, as the front matter quoted below shows. The full poem is shown. The example illustrates the form; the rules above come from the glossary, not from the poem.
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
—Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Project Gutenberg ebook #32373 · our check found this text on October 31, 2026
FRANCIS T. PALGRAVE LATE PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD REVISED AND ENLARGED London MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1902