More Student Selected Sonnets

This is an excellent example of a modern sonnet on a fascinating subject.
“There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,

And not one will know of the war, not one

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,

If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn

Would scarcely know that we were gone.” By- Ray Bradbury



Petrarch's Rima, Sonnet 134

I FIND no peace, and all my war is done;
I fear and hope; I burn and freeze like ice;
I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise;
And nought I have, and all the world I seize on;
That looseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison
And holdeth me not, yet can I 'scape nowise;
Nor letteth me live nor die at my device*, [by my own choice]
And yet of death it giveth none occasion.
Withouten eyen, I see; and without tongue I plain*; [lament]
I desire to perish, and yet I ask health;
I love another, and thus I hate myself;
I feed me in sorrow, and laugh in all my pain;
Likewise displeaseth me both death and life;
And my delight is causer of this strife.

Sir Thomas Wyatt