Sonnet

Sonnet, lyric poem of 14 lines with traditional rules of structure and rhyme scheme. There are two traditional types of sonnets: The Petrarchan is comprised of an octave and sestet (rhyming scheme abbaabba cdecde) and the Shakespearean comprising three quatrains and a couplet (rhyming scheme abab cdcd efef gg). Devised in 13th-century Italy and perfected by Petrarch, it entered English literature in the 16th century and was adopted by such poets as William Shakespeare, John Milton, John Keats, and William Wordsworth as a vehicle for concentrated thought and feeling, very often of love.