Sonnet Sonnet is a lyric poem consisting of a single stanza of fourteen iambic pentameter lines linked by an intricate rhyme scheme. The term ‘sonnet’ is derived from the Italian word Sonata. It synonymous word is ‘Sonnetto’ , diminutive of ‘Suono' . Suono means sound. It is also connected with the early Italian verb Sonare meaning ‘to play upon instrument’. There are two major patterns or rhymes in sonnets written in English language: 1. The Italian or Petrarchan sonnet:- Italian sonnet has two parts, octave and sestet. The right lines of the octave contain two quatrains, the rhyme-scheme is abba abba and the six lines of the sestet are divided into two tercets and the rhyme-scheme is cdcdcd or cdecde . Petrarch’s sonnets were first imitated in England, both in their stanza form and their subject— the hopes and pains of an adoring male lover — by Sir Thomas Wyatt in the early sixteen century. Tue Petrarchan form was later used, and for a variety of subjects, by Mil...