Questions about Sonnets by Neruda, Petrarch, Sidney, and Shakespeare

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1. The speaker wishes to seek out love to find refuge from his feelings. Love conceals his bad feelings by masking his poor life from the judging eyes of men.

2. What I think Neruda meant by the line was that when the speaker is without that special person it feels like he doesn’t exist and that he is nothing.

3. Neruda uses sensory imagery so that the reader is able to visualize the speaker’s love for his or her special person. He uses warm words to depict love so as to make the reader cheerful.

4. Petrarch’s women all are too aristocratic and high-class, so Petrarch fantasizes about them with his sonnets. Neruda on the other hand knows the women he loves. He also is much more closely attached to his women, as he feels empty when he’s not around them.


1. The lines tell me that the speaker is romantic and able to see if a person longs for love.

2. Quatrain 1 tells the reader about the speaker’s vain attempts to write his name in the sand. Quatrain 2 has the tide telling the speaker that whenever he writes his name in the sand, the tide will simply wash it away. Also, if the tide tries to write its name, then the tide itself will wash it away. Quatrain 3 has the speaker tell the tide that the tide will live forever in history because the speaker will tell tales about it everywhere. The couplet at the end is a proverb that states that everyone dies, but love continues on forever.

4. With my reputation for strength, I will shield myself from the many attacks of despair: I wish for my nightmares to go away and if they do, I will respect the power of bad dreams.


4. With a group of sonnets, poets are able to convey opposite sides of a perspective, usually love. For example, Sidney discusses how in “Sonnet 31” the Moon doesn’t love anyone. He explains how he feels sorry for the Moon because it is void of love. However, in “Sonnet 39” Sidney explains how love often troubles him and gives him nightmares.


1. Shakespeare fits his message into the three-quatrain, one-couplet structure by giving an in-troduction to what he’s saying in the first quatrain, uses that introduction to explain how the woman he is talking about is one for the ages in the second quatrain, uses the third quatrain to explain how the women is desired by all, and uses the couplet to show how people are amazed at her beauty but can’t describe it.

2. If Shakespeare changed his sonnet to the Petrarchan format, then his writing would not be as organized and concrete, as he would have to put two of his quatrains together and merge the last quatrain and couplet together. This would eliminate any breaks between the first and second quatrain and the last quatrain and the couplet.


2. The couplet represents a shift in attitude because up to that point, Shakespeare was listing all of his mistress’s flaws and imperfections. However, at that couplet, Shakespeare shows his undying love for his mistress.

3. The couplet is strongly linked to the last quatrain because it completely the shift in attitude. The attitude is lines 1–8 all show how the speaker is depressed, but, in lines 9–14, the speaker is cheerful. The couplet shows the speaker’s optimism and newfound place in the world.


1. Wandering, bark

2. Bending, sickle

3. Pleasing, sound

4. Wasted, time