Numerous sonnets in the early English Renaissance were modeled on those of Petrarch and other Italian poets. Philip Sidney used this form for many sonnets in his sequence Astrophel and Stella, only converting completely to the English sonnet form in a subsequent example, "Leave Me O Love." Milton introduced his own variant, the Miltonic sonnet. All through the nineteenth century the Petrarchan sonnet enjoyed an enthusiastic revival, its ornateness (the recurrence of only two rhymes in the octave) appealing to Romantic sensibilities, as well as it association with the late Middle Ages (or earliest Renaissance).  The form is an octave rhyming abbaabba followed by a separate sestet, or six-line group, which can rhyme in various ways: cdecde, cdcdcd, cddcee, cdcdee.
 

Translation of Petrarch's Rima, Sonnet 134

            I FIND no peace, and all my war is done;
                  I fear and hope; I burn and freeze like ice;
                  I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise;
            And nought I have, and all the world I seize on;
            That looseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison
                  And holdeth me not, yet can I 'scape nowise;
                  Nor letteth me live nor die at my device,
            And yet of death it giveth none occasion.
            Withouten eyen, I see; and without tongue I plain;
                  I desire to perish, and yet I ask health;
                  I love another, and thus I hate myself;
            I feed me in sorrow, and laugh in all my pain;
                  Likewise displeaseth me both death and life;
                  And my delight is causer of this strife.
                                            --Sir Thomas Wyatt
 
 

       Not at first sight, nor with a dribbed shot
            Love gave the wound, which while I breathe will bleed;
            But known worth did in mine of time proceed,
            Till by degrees it had full conquest got:

      I saw and liked, I liked but loved not;
            I lov'd, but straight did not what Love decreed.
            At length to love's decrees I, forc'd, agreed,
            Yet with repining at so partial lot.

      Now even that footstep of lost liberty
            Is gone, and now like slave-born Muscovite
            I call it praise to suffer tyranny;

      And now employ the remnant of my wit
            To make myself believe that all is well,
            While with a feeling skill I paint my hell.
                                            --Philip Sidney
 
 

                            With the same heart, I said, I'll answer thee
                            As those, when thou shalt call me by my name--
                            Lo, the vain promise ! is the same, the same,
                            Perplexed and ruffled by life's strategy ?
                            When called before, I told how hastily
                            I dropped my flowers or brake off from a game,
                            To run and answer with the smile that came
                            At play last moment, and went on with me
                            Through my obedience. When I answer now,
                            I drop a grave thought, break from solitude;
                            Yet still my heart goes to thee--ponder how--
                            Not as to a single good, but all my good !
                            Lay thy hand on it, best one, and allow
                            That no child's foot could run fast as this blood.
                                                    --Elizabeth Barrett Browning

                                 Not in thy body is thy life at all
                                     But in this lady's lips and hands and eyes;
                                     Through these she yields thee life that vivifies
                                 What else were sorrow's servant and death's thrall.
                                 Look on thyself without her, and recall
                                     The waste remembrance and forlorn surmise
                                     That liv'd but in a dead-drawn breath of sighs
                                 O'er vanish'd hours and hours eventual.

                                 Even so much life hath the poor tress of hair
                                   Which, stor'd apart, is all love hath to show
                                   For heart-beats and for fire-heats long ago;
                               Even so much life endures unknown, even where,
                                   'Mid change the changeless night environeth,
                                   Lies all that golden hair undimm'd in death
                                                                            --Dante Gabriel Rossetti

            this is the garden:colours come and go,
            frail azures fluttering from night's outer wing
            strong silent greens silently lingering,
            absolute lights like baths of golden snow.
            This is the garden:pursed lips do blow
            upon cool flutes within wide glooms,and sing
            (of harps celestial to the quivering string)
            invisible faces hauntingly and slow.

            This is the garden.   Time shall surely reap
            and on Death's blade lie many a flower curled,
            in other lands where other songs be sung;
            yet stand They here enraptured,as among
            the slow deep trees perpetual of sleep
            some silver-fingered fountain steals the world.
                                            --e.e. cummings

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