Check out the 'Love' theme for more on that. Certainly this poem has some of the qualities of a love poem, but, to say the least, this poem isn’t just a poet’s outpouring of love for someone else. The main reason is that sonnets, at least before Shakespeare was writing, were almost exclusively love poems. Don’t be fooled, though: beyond the form, this is not your stereotypical sonnet. In this case, the closing lines have the feel of a cute little poem of their own, making it clear that the poet’s abilities were the subject of this poem all along. This poem also has the uniquely English twist of a concluding rhyming couplet that partially sums up and partially redefines what came before it. Here Shakespeare switches from bashing the summer to describing the immortality of his beloved. Just as in older Italian sonnets by which the English sonnets (later to be called Shakespearean sonnets) were inspired, the ninth line introduces a significant change in tone or position. The form of this sonnet is also notable for being a perfect model of the Shakespearean sonnet form. First, its necessary to understand how stress works in English. But if youre not confident of your ear, there are certain techniques you can use to help you identify how a line scans. There are two quatrains (groups of four lines), followed by a third quatrain in which the tone of the poem shifts a bit, which is in turn followed by a rhyming couplet (two lines) that wraps the poem up. As the comments to your question have noted, the most reliable way to figure out whether a given line is iambic pentameter is to sound it out. There aren’t even any lines that flow over into the next line – every single line is end-stopped. With the exception of a couple relatively strong first syllables (and even these are debatable), there are basically no deviations from the meter.

This is a classic Shakespearean sonnet with fourteen lines in very regular iambic pentameter.

A Shakespearean Sonnet in Iambic Pentameter

Iambic pentameter italian sonnet