Sonnet 139 Sonnet 139 Sonnet 139 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. Sonnet 139 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form "abab cdcd efef gg" and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The 6th line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter: Line 3 begins with a common metrical variation, an initial reversal: Initial reversals also occur in lines 5 and 14, and
Sonnet 26 composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions per line. The seventh line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter line. The next contains a final extrametrical syllable or "feminine ending", of which this sonnet has six; it also exhibits an ictus moved to the right (resulting in a four-position figure, codice_1, sometimes referred to as a "minor ionic"): As Stephen Booth notes, Sonnet 26 works on a series of "shows": the word appears in four separate lines of the sonnet. Booth perceives a vague sexual pun in the second half of