A Sonnet

A sonnet is a type of poem, most popularly mastered by Shakespeare, who wrote far too many of them! It is a sequence of three quatraines, culminating in a couplet. A quatraine is a four line poem, and a couplet a two line poem. They can all have independent rhyming schemes but should be in the same meter, which is normally iambic. (Iambic meter is composed of pairs of syllables called 'iambs', the second of each emphasized.)

Here, to prove my credentials as an English tutor, is a rudimentary sonnet, composed in a great hurry, and with awful meter. Iambic it is not, but a good start is a good start. All writing is a study in multiple drafts, after all...

'Sonnet I' by Oliver Bain (2016)
(also known as 'The Time Travel Sonnet')

I fly through time, a rover back and forth,
Righting wrongs and seeking a pathway home.
With each flash of light, facing south or north,
My feet might touch past sand or future loam.
The first time was a trip to Rome by boat,
The next a jaunt to the Moon by balloon.
The third was a meal with an old dragoon,
But next I was chasing an angry goat!
How long have I been bouncing to and fro?
How long until this tale is fully told?
It was meant to be a test, a brave go,
With our time machine, which will our past fold.
When will I land this time, when that flash fades?
Home at last, the past, or green future glades?


O.