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 71 him to mourn. This is particularly ironic considering that there are lines in other sonnets (e.g., Sonnet 18, Sonnet 55, Sonnet 65 and Sonnet 81) that speak of immortality through poetic verse, thus negating the possibility that one can be forgotten. These examples give credence to Peguiney's argument of a calculated attempt to invoke the youth's mourning, as he writes in his essay Sonnets 71-74, "The 'if' clauses at lines 5 and 9 are cunning invitations to future readings of the verse, and how impossible it would be for 'you [to] read this [handwritten] line' and 'remember not / The