A Spenserian sonnet is a fourteen-line poem, usually in iambic pentameter, that rhymes ABAB BCBC CDCD EE. The first quatrain passes one rhyme sound to the second, and the second passes one to the third; the closing couplet introduces a new rhyme sound. Edmund Spenser wrote his best-known one about a man who writes his beloved's name on a beach and watches the tide wash it away twice. That poem, Sonnet 75, is the standard model, and the sections below use it to show each working part of the form.
In This Article
- How Spenser Came to the Form
- Sonnet 75 With Its Rhymes Marked
- How the Linked Rhymes Hold the Poem Together
- The Rhythm Under the Lines
- Where the Argument Turns
- How It Compares With Shakespeare's and Petrarch's Sonnets
- Key Takeaways
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Follow the Rhymes Through the Argument
How Spenser Came to the Form
Spenser's translated sonnets had appeared in print as early as 1569. By 1590 he was using the linked rhyme scheme in dedicatory sonnets accompanying the first three books of The Faerie Queene, his long allegorical epic. His sonnet writing therefore preceded the fashion sparked by Sidney's sequence in 1591.
Philip Sidney had died in 1586 of a wound taken at Zutphen. His sequence Astrophil and Stella had passed around in manuscript, and in 1591 a printer finally brought it out. Its success started a rush. Spenser had a personal tie to the man who started the fashion: he had dedicated The Shepheardes Calender to Sidney in 1579.
So when Spenser published Amoretti in 1595, he was entering a crowded field. The sequence has 89 sonnets and appeared in one volume with Epithalamion, the poem he wrote for his own wedding. The sonnets trace his courtship of Elizabeth Boyle, whom he married in 1594.
The title is Italian for "little loves." It nods to Francesco Petrarca, whose fourteenth-century poems to Laura gave English poets their model of the love sonnet. The form itself was Spenser's way of standing out from his rivals. He kept the English habit of three quatrains and a couplet but carried rhyme sounds across the quatrain breaks. That brought back something Italian: a small set of sounds reused many times.
Sonnet 75 With Its Rhymes Marked
Among Spenserian sonnet examples, Sonnet 75 is the clearest place to begin. It tells a complete story in fourteen lines with three speaking turns, and its rhymes are easy to hear. The spelling below is modernized, and the last column glosses the words English has since dropped.
| Line | Text | Rhyme | Gloss |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | One day I wrote her name upon the strand, | A | strand: beach |
| 2 | But came the waves and washed it away: | B | |
| 3 | Again I wrote it with a second hand, | A | |
| 4 | But came the tide, and made my pains his prey. | B | |
| 5 | "Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain assay, | B | assay: attempt |
| 6 | A mortal thing so to immortalize; | C | |
| 7 | For I myself shall like to this decay, | B | |
| 8 | And eke my name be wiped out likewise." | C | eke: also |
| 9 | "Not so," (quod I) "let baser things devise | C | quod: said |
| 10 | To die in dust, but you shall live by fame: | D | |
| 11 | My verse your virtues rare shall eternize, | C | eternize: make eternal |
| 12 | And in the heavens write your glorious name: | D | |
| 13 | Where whenas death shall all the world subdue, | E | whenas: when |
| 14 | Our love shall live, and later life renew." | E |
Read down the Rhyme column before reading the words. B and C each turn up four times. A, D and E turn up twice. The two heavy sounds sit in the middle of the poem, where the quarrel happens.
How the Linked Rhymes Hold the Poem Together
Those doubled sounds are the Spenserian rhyme scheme at work. The B sound of "away" and "prey" ends the first quatrain, and "assay" carries it into the second. The C sound of "immortalize" and "likewise" ends the second, and "devise" carries it into the third. No quatrain stands alone. Each is already sounding the next before it finishes.
In Sonnet 75 the links do more than bind. The waves take the name as their "prey," and the beloved answers that she too will "decay." Her line rhymes with the sea's destruction, so her mortality sounds like the tide.
The C link runs the other way. She calls it vain to "immortalize" a mortal thing. He replies that his verse will "eternize" her. His answer rhymes with her objection, and he wins the argument on her own sound.
Then the chain breaks. "Subdue" and "renew" share nothing with lines 1 to 12. The couplet steps outside the pattern to deliver the promise.
The Rhythm Under the Lines
Spenser wrote in iambic pentameter, the standard line of English sonnets: five iambs, each an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, ten syllables in all. Line 1 scans cleanly: "one DAY i WROTE her NAME up-ON the STRAND."
That pattern is a norm the voice plays against. Line 5 opens with two stresses together, "VAIN MAN," because the beloved is scolding him and leans on both words.
Line 2 has nine syllables if "washed" is pronounced as one. Reading it as two syllables, "washéd," supplies ten: "but CAME | the WAVES | and WASH | èd IT | aWAY." The apparent shortage is a matter of pronunciation, not a missing metrical foot.
The meter also slows the ending. Line 14 puts "love," "live" and "life" on stressed beats. The final promise lands one word at a time.
Where the Argument Turns
The turn, or volta, is the point where a sonnet changes direction. Many readers expect it in the couplet, because the couplet sounds like a conclusion. Sonnet 75 turns earlier.
The poem gives its lines to speakers in sequence. He narrates his failed writing in lines 1 to 4. She objects in lines 5 to 8. At line 9 he answers, "Not so," and everything after those two words argues against her.
The timing is the clever part. "Devise" continues the C sound of her "likewise," so his reply begins before the sound changes. The argument pivots while the rhyme keeps running, and the link keeps the reversal from feeling abrupt.
A second, smaller move follows. Lines 10 to 12 promise that she will live by fame. Lines 13 and 14 widen that to "Our love," something the two of them share, and the fresh E rhymes mark the shift.
How It Compares With Shakespeare's and Petrarch's Sonnets
Set beside the Shakespearean and Petrarchan sonnet, Spenser's form sits between them. The quickest way to see where is to put Sonnet 75 next to Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?", which makes the same promise of immortality through verse.
Shakespeare's sonnets, printed in 1609, rhyme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Sonnet 18 rhymes "day" with "May," then moves on to "shines" and "declines," then to "fade" and "shade." Every quatrain gets fresh sounds, seven in all. Spenser's links cut that to five.
The couplets show what changes. Shakespeare closes: "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." Life sits in "this," the poem, and the poet hands it to the beloved. Spenser closes on "Our love shall live, and later life renew." The poet shares the future with her. Both poems turn at line 9. Shakespeare's "But thy eternal summer shall not fade" shifts from summer's impermanence to the beloved's survival and introduces fresh rhymes. Spenser's "Not so" answers the beloved while continuing her C rhyme. Shakespeare's couplet sums up his promise; Spenser's widens his to their shared love.
The Petrarchan sonnet divides into an octave rhymed ABBAABBA and a sestet, often CDECDE or CDCDCD, with the turn at line 9.
Spenser's "Not so" lands on line 9, the Petrarchan spot. His rhymes run straight through it, and in English that is costly. The B and C sounds each require four rhyming line endings. As Timothy Steele explains in Introduction to Rhymes and Stanzas, English words have many different endings, so rhyme groups of three or more can be challenging to sustain.
Key Takeaways
- The form has fourteen lines: three quatrains and a closing couplet, rhymed ABAB BCBC CDCD EE.
- Shared B and C rhymes join each quatrain to the next, so the poem uses five sounds where Shakespeare uses seven.
- Spenser had used the form in the dedicatory sonnets to The Faerie Queene in 1590. Amoretti appeared in 1595, following a sonnet fashion that Sidney's Astrophil and Stella had set off in 1591.
- Iambic pentameter is the norm, and the voice bends it, as in the doubled stress of "Vain man."
- In Sonnet 75 the turn comes at line 9 inside a rhyme link, and the couplet breaks the chain to widen the promise.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the main difference between Spenserian and Shakespearean sonnets?
Spenserian sonnets carry a rhyme from each quatrain into the next, while Shakespeare gives every quatrain new sounds. Both end with a couplet on a fresh rhyme.
What was Edmund Spenser's most famous sonnet?
His most famous is Sonnet 75 from Amoretti, "One day I wrote her name upon the strand." Its full text appears in the table above.
What is a Spenserian sonnet?
It is a fourteen-line poem, usually in iambic pentameter, whose three quatrains share linking rhymes before a separate closing couplet. It takes its name from Edmund Spenser, who used it in Amoretti.
How many distinct rhyme sounds does the interlocking pattern require?
The pattern needs five rhyme sounds, A through E. The B and C sounds each have to supply four rhyming words, as the rhyme column of Sonnet 75 shows. That demand is why the links are harder to write in English than Shakespeare's pairs.
Is the Spenserian stanza the same form as this sonnet?
No, the Spenserian stanza is a different form: the nine-line unit of The Faerie Queene. It has eight lines of pentameter and a final six-beat line, rhymed ABABBCBCC. It shares the sonnet's habit of linking rhymes, but it is a stanza for long narrative, not a fourteen-line poem.
Does Amoretti use the linked pattern throughout?
Nearly all of the 89 sonnets in Amoretti use the linked pattern. Sonnet 8 is commonly cited as the exception, because it follows the English scheme of separate rhymes in each quatrain.
Follow the Rhymes Through the Argument
Test the connection using Sonnet 75 in the table above. Cover the Rhyme column, write out the fourteen end words, and label them A through E. Mark the links between lines 4 and 5 and between lines 8 and 9. Beside each, name the speaker and summarize the idea carried across the break. Then underline "Not so" at line 9: the argument reverses while the C rhyme continues. Finally, compare that turn with the fresh rhyme at line 13. What changes there: the speaker, the argument, or the scope of the promise?