If Thou Must Love Me, Let It Be For Nought (Sonnet 14) Essay Questions

How does this poem demonstrate the characteristics of a sonnet?

Like most sonnets, this poem includes fourteen lines, all of them written in iambic pentameter. Its thematic focus, love, is perhaps the most common theme in sonnets generally. Meanwhile, it seeks to advance an argument, another very common use for the sonnet form. This is an Italian sonnet specifically, meaning that its volta, or major shift, occurs following its eighth line. In the fashion of most Italian sonnets, it both shifts subject matter slightly and shifts rhyme scheme after this volta, going from an ABBA rhyme scheme to a CDCDCD one.

Discuss the poem's use of the second person.

This poem is written as a monologue, delivered from a female speaker to an unidentified listener. While it is known that Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote the sonnet for her husband Robert Browning, the "you" addressed in the work goes unnamed and unidentified. As such, the reader also experiences themself as the poem's addressee, with the use of the second person lending the work urgency and even a demanding tone: the speaker asks something of her addressee, and the reader feels obliged to respond. This sense of urgency, obligation, and intimacy created by the second person creates a compelling conflict and tension.