Sonnet 3 form of a Shakespearean sonnet: fourteen decasyllabic, iambic pentameter lines, that form three quatrains and a concluding rhyming couplet. It follows the form's rhyme scheme: "abab cdcd efef gg". Each line of the first quatrain of Sonnet 3 exhibits a final extrametrical syllable or "feminine ending". The first line additionally exhibits an initial reversal: In this sonnet, the poet is urging the 'fair youth' to preserve something of himself and something of the image he sees in the mirror by fathering a child, "Now is the time that face should form another". The message is reiterated in the last lines
Sonnet 1 octave-generalization will be followed by a particular sestet-application, an octave question will be followed by a sestet answer or at least a quatrain answer before the summarizing couplet". In lines one through four of this sonnet, Shakespeare writes about increasing and references memory. Here, Shakespeare chooses to rhyme "increase" and "decease", "die" and "memory" and then proceeds to use "eyes" and "lies", "fuel" and "cruel" as rhymes in the second quatrain (lines five through eight). In lines five through twelve, Shakespeare shifts to famine and waste. Carl Atkins highlights Shakespeare's inventiveness in the second quatrain, where the sonnet takes on