Sonnet 11 his name. An English sonnet is made up of fourteen lines grouped into three quatrains and an ending couplet, with the rhyme scheme "ABAB CDCD EFEF GG". Sonnet 11 exhibits this structure. The sonnet has four feminine endings (accepting the Quarto's contraction of "grow'st" and "bestow'st"). "Convertest" would have been pronounced as a perfect rhyme with the second line's "departest", a holdover from Medieval English. Carl D. Atkins notes "This is a sonnet of contrasts: feminine lines, regular lines; regular iambs, irregular line 10; no midline pauses, multiple midline pauses; waning, growth, beauty, harshness, life and death, beginning and end."
Sonnet 56 sonnet's first line was inspired by George Whetstone's "The Rocke of Regard" (1576). The sonnet is divided up into four quatrain, groups of four lines, and a couplet. Sonnet 56 is puzzling because of its seemingly inappropriate placement next to Sonnet 55. In Sonnet 55, the poet's relationship with the young man is steady and secure, but here there is a sudden shift from confidence to deep insecurity. In this sonnet the poet examines the "quality of love." It is not clear whose love is being addressed. The poet's, "his friend's, or that of both?" The poet "pleads for the