narrative, states the proposition or raises a question. The sestet drives home the narrative by making an abstract comment, applies the proposition, or solves the problem. In Sonnet 18 the octave says that the beloved is better than a summers day. It develops the idea of this sonnet. The sestet then explains why the beloved is better than a summer’s day. The sestet also states that the lover will live forever. Instead of the octave and sestet divisions, this sonnet characteristically embodies four divisions. Three quatrains of four lines each with a rhyme scheme of its own, and a rhymed couplet. In this case, the rhyme scheme of the quatrains is: abab cdcd efef gg. The couplet at the end is usually a commentary on the foregoing. Some types of poetic devices that are frequently used in this love poem are meter, rhyme, assonance, consonance, repetition, end & internal rhyme and alliteration. Meter is a sort of up down bouncy ball type of sound that goes along with the line of poetry. It has accents and unaccented syllables. Alliteration works by repeating one or more letters at the beginning of a word throughout a line. Some examples of alliteration (shown in italics in the sonnet above) in this sonnet is spread out in all fourteen lines. Words like shall summers, thee to, thou temperate, art and, more more, do darling, and all a, summers short, sometime shines, too the, hot heaven, fair from fair, summer shall and time thou are all examples of alliteration. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds. Examples of assonance (shown in bold in the sonnet above) are spread throughout sonnet 18. Words such as compare summers, rough buds, sometime declines, in his, thou grow’st, breathe see and lives his gives are all assonance. Consonance, which means that the final consonants agree, is also used in this specific sonnet. Some consonance examples (shown underlined in the sonnet above) are compare more, winds buds, is his, fair fair...
