Welcome to the land of symbols, imagery, and wordplay. Before you travel any further, please know that there may be some thorny academic terminology ahead. Never fear, Shmoop is here. Check out our...
A Shakespearean Sonnet in Iambic Pentameter
This is a classic Shakespearean sonnet with fourteen lines in very regular iambic pentameter. With the exception of a couple relative...Generally, it’s a good rule of thumb to avoid calling the speaker of a poem by the name of the author. The idea is that the speaker in a work of literature, describing the subject matter, cou...
When we read this poem out loud, the first thing that strikes us is how neat the whole thing is. It’s so perfectly tied up. Every single line bounces along in perfect iambic pentameter, with...
Not much to say about the title here. This is indeed a sonnet, and the "Form and Meter" section describes how Shakespeare made the sonnet form his own. As far as the number eighteen is concerned, i...
Artistic Self-reference
Some people like to say that all art is ultimately about two things: love and death. Shakespeare, though, never one to be complacent, noticed that itR...(4) Base Camp
Here’s a poem that isn’t particularly hard to get through. In fact, if we were just judging on difficulty of comprehending the meaning of the words on...Imagine a poet sitting out in a field on a warm but breezy summer day, contemplating the nature of existence and jotting down some poetic philosophy. We imagine it’s kind of like the weather...
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