ShmoopTube

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Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by William Shakespeare. He certainly was obsessed

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with iambic pentameter. He had a real bee in his sonnet.

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The previous poem is an example of—what?

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To pinpoint the answer to this question, we've got to google our brains

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for the meaning of each of these poetic terms.

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Armed with these definitions, the elimination process is a snap.

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We'll knock out choice (C) first. The "couple" in "couplet" reminds us that

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the term refers to two lines of verse that usually have the same meter and rhyme.

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The poem above has way more than two lines...

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So we're positive we can get rid of answer (C).

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(B) isn't looking so great either. A limerick is usually a short and funny poem.

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The poem above is neither of those things, making (B) incorrect.

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We can also take (D) out of the running, since we know that ballads are poems or songs that

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tell stories.

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The poem above is way more concerned with philosophizing about love than telling us a story.

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Answer (A) is the way to go. Fourteen lines with an "a-b-a-b c-d-c-d e-f-e-f g-g" structure

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means that this poem is an English sonnet.

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The poem totally follows these rules, so (A) is the correct answer.

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"a-b-a-b c-d-c-d"...man, whoever created the English sonnet must've loved alphabet soup.

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