Sonnet 11 his name. An English sonnet is made up of fourteen lines grouped into three quatrains and an ending couplet, with the rhyme scheme "ABAB CDCD EFEF GG". Sonnet 11 exhibits this structure. The sonnet has four feminine endings (accepting the Quarto's contraction of "grow'st" and "bestow'st"). "Convertest" would have been pronounced as a perfect rhyme with the second line's "departest", a holdover from Medieval English. Carl D. Atkins notes "This is a sonnet of contrasts: feminine lines, regular lines; regular iambs, irregular line 10; no midline pauses, multiple midline pauses; waning, growth, beauty, harshness, life and death, beginning and end."
Octave (poetry) Octave (poetry) An octave is a verse form consisting of eight lines of iambic pentameter (in English) or of hendecasyllables (in Italian). The most common rhyme scheme for an octave is "abba abba". An octave is the first part of a Petrarchan sonnet, which ends with a contrasting sestet. In traditional Italian sonnets the octave always ends with a conclusion of one idea, giving way to another idea in the sestet. Some English sonnets break that rule, often to striking effect. In Milton's Sonnet 16, the sestet begins early, halfway through the last line of the octave: Patience's too-quick reply