"Venus and Adonis" is a 1200-line narrative poem that retells the myth of Venus, goddess of love, and Adonis, a young hunter. In the poem, Venus attempts to seduce Adonis to no avail, and Adonis dies at the hands of a boar. This story is told in Ovid's Metamorphoses, which Shakespeare drew from for inspiration, though Shakespeare's telling focuses on different elements of the story than Ovid's, particularly the power differential in the relationship between Venus and Adonis. The poem is written in sesta rima, which is a stanza that contains one quatrain followed by a couplet utilizing the ABABCC rhyme scheme. It has been dubbed the "Venus and Adonis rhyme scheme" by some.
The poem is...
