Sonnet 14 Sonnet 14 Sonnet 14 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a procreation sonnet within the Fair Youth sequence. Sonnet 14 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet, which consists of three quatrains followed by a couplet. It follows the traditional rhyme scheme of the form: "abab cdcd efef gg". Like many of the others in the sequence, it is written in a type of metre called iambic pentameter, which is based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions per line. Typically English sonnets present a problem or argument in the
Sonnet 151 steer his actions. It uses the body as a metaphor for the penis, "rising" and "falling" with an erection when aroused, and so reduces the speaker to nothing more than his phallus; by giving in to his desires he enslaves himself to the "Dark Lady". Sonnet 151, with a "bawdy chronicle of erection and detumescence," contrasts with Sonnet 55's "grandiloquent expression," but their theme is the same: "what changes, what remains." Sonnet 55 "celebrates ... love and poetry that endure[s]" where Sonnet 151 "contemplates the inevitability of change..." Sonnet 151 has been compared to a verse by 17th-century author Joseph