Read several other sonnets; for instance, the poem On the Life-Mask of Abraham Lincoln, on page [210], or On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, by John Keats, or The Grasshopper and the Cricket, by Leigh Hunt.
Notice how these other sonnets are constructed. Why are they considered good?
If possible, read part of what is said about the sonnet in English Verse, by R.M. Alden or in Forms of English Poetry, by C.F. Johnson, or in Melodies of English Verse, by Lewis Kennedy Morse; notice some of the examples given.
Look in the good magazines for examples of the sonnet.
COLLATERAL READINGS
| To the Grasshopper and the Cricket | Leigh Hunt |
| The Fish Answers (or, The Fish to the Man)[11] | Leigh Hunt |
| On the Grasshopper and Cricket | John Keats |
| On First Looking into Chapman's Homer | John Keats |
| Ozymandias | P.B. Shelley |
| The Sonnet | R.W. Gilder |
| The Odyssey (sonnet) | Andrew Lang |
| The Wine of Circe (sonnet) | Dante Gabriel Rossetti |
| The Automobile[12] (sonnet) | Percy Mackaye |
| The Sonnet | William Wordsworth |
See also references for the Odyssey, p. [137], and for Moly, p. [84].