Sonnet 92

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Sonnet 92

Sonnet 92 1609.jpg

–William Shakespeare

Sonnet 92 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.

Structure

Sonnet 92 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form, abab cdcd efef gg and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The 5th line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:

  ×   /   ×  /   ×  /     ×  /    ×    / 
Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs, (92.5)

/ = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus.

The 12th line exhibits both an initial and a mid-line reversal:

 /  ×  ×  /     ×  /     /  ×  ×  / 
Happy to have thy love, happy to die! (92.12)

The meter demands that both in line 2's "assurèd" and line 13's "blessèd", the -ed ending receives full syllabic status.

References

First edition and facsimile

Variorum editions

Modern critical editions

• online text