Sonnet 41 three sonnets (40, 41, 42) that dwell on this betrayal of the speaker. This sonnet is also notable for the textual references made to Shakespeare's other works. The sonnet is written in the typical Shakespearean sonnet form, containing 14 lines of iambic pentameter and ending in a rhymed couplet. Shakespeare's sonnets conform to the English or Shakespearean sonnet form. The form consists of fourteen lines structured as three quatrains and a couplet, rhyming "abab cdcd efef gg" and written in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. While Shakespeare's versification maintains
Sonnet 15 that Sonnet 15's closing line "As he [i.e. Time] takes from you, I engraft you new" (15.14) is the "first of several traditional claims for the immortalizing power of verse." This theme of poetic immortality is continued in later sonnets, including sonnet 17's closing couplet "You should live twice: in [your child] and in my rhyme," in sonnet 18's last few lines "Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade / When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st. / So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life