The Spenserian sonnet is an English sonnet created by Edmund Spencer. Like other English sonnets, this poem consists of 3 quatrains and a couplet. The defining characteristic of the Spenserian sonnet is that the 3 quatrains utilize an interlocking rhyme scheme. The Spenserian form presents a question/idea/conflict in the first 3 stanzas and a resolution/bold statement in the final couplet (the Volta).
Structure:
3 quatrains and a couplet
Rhyme Scheme:
abab bcbc cdcd ee
Template :
(a)
(b)
(a)
(b)
(b)
(c)
(b)
(c)
(c)
(d)
(c)
(d)
(e) [Volta]
(e)
Example:
Easy
In sugar lace and wax, your fleeting thought’s,
too roughly sewn to have its flow constrained.
Too art to be expressed in ones and naughts,
but surely not as honest as is feigned.
It’s not the passion of the cluster-trained,
to opt out of the class experiment.
Beyond the guard of that tofore explained,
awaits the rocky slope of raw dissent.
Ideas flounder in a mind content.
Without a toxic stew to feed upon,
your windup agitation won’t ferment.
Such is the virtue of the woebegone.
A life that comes too easy disenchants.
When wonder wanes, an atrophy supplants.
Ron Conway
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