Sonnet 154 presented in Sonnet 153. In the first quatrain, the man wishes that his beauty be passed onto his heir. The second quatrain asks the question of how beauty can be maintained through time and poetry. Finally, the third ends with the woeful realization that the preservation of happiness is problematic in and of itself. The rhyme scheme within Sonnet 153 and 154 is inconsistent in that the words do not necessarily follow the same sounds. Lines 10 and 12 end with the words "perpetual" and "thrall" and lines 13 and 14 end with "prove" and "love." Authors argue that this
Poetry sonnet), Michael Drayton, and Shakespeare, whose sonnets are among the most famous in English poetry, with twenty being included in the "Oxford Book of English Verse". However, the twists and turns associated with the "volta" allow for a logical flexibility applicable to many subjects. Poets from the earliest centuries of the sonnet to the present have utilized the form to address topics related to politics (John Milton, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Claude McKay), theology (John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins), war (Wilfred Owen, e.e. cummings), and gender and sexuality (Carol Ann Duffy). Further, postmodern authors such as Ted Berrigan and John Berryman