Sonnet 24 Sonnet 24 Sonnet 24 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare, and is a part of the Fair Youth sequence. In the sonnet, Shakespeare treats the commonplace Renaissance conceit connecting heart and eye. Although it relates to other sonnets that explore this theme, Sonnet 24 is considered largely imitative and conventional. Sonnet 24 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. English sonnets contain fourteen lines, including three quatrains and a final couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form: "abab cdcd efef gg", and is written in iambic pentameter, a type of
Sonnet 146 regular lines, and a characteristically Shakespearean use of metrical expectations to emphasize pronouns, suggest that readings with only an initial reversal or a regular meter may be the most appropriate. The sonnet is notable for its uncharacteristically religious tone and call for moral richness, whereas most sonnets treasure earthly qualities of beauty and love. In its vocabulary and vocative address to the soul the sonnet invites comparison with Psalm 146. Although Michael West has persuasively argued that this sonnet is indebted to the medieval genre of poetic dialogues between soul and body, the extent to which sonnet actually presents conventional