Poetry have challenged the traditional definitions of the sonnet form, rendering entire sequences of "sonnets" that often lack rhyme, a clear logical progression, or even a consistent count of fourteen lines. "Shi" () Is the main type of Classical Chinese poetry. Within this form of poetry the most important variations are "folk song" styled verse ("yuefu"), "old style" verse ("gushi"), "modern style" verse ("jintishi"). In all cases, rhyming is obligatory. The Yuefu is a folk ballad or a poem written in the folk ballad style, and the number of lines and the length of the lines could be irregular. For the
Sonnet of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, there were few very successful traditional sonnets. "Modern Love" (1862) by George Meredith is a collection of fifty 16-line sonnets about the failure of his first marriage. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote several major sonnets, often in sprung rhythm, such as "The Windhover", and also several sonnet variants such as the 10-line curtal sonnet "Pied Beauty" and the 24-line caudate sonnet "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire". Hopkin's poetry was, however, not published until 1918. By the end of the 19th century, the sonnet had been adapted into a general-purpose form of great flexibility. In the United