Sonnets take the form of iambic pentameter. That means that there are about ten syllables in each line and that they tend to fall into a pattern of one unaccented syllable followed by one accented syllable. Say line 12, "And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand," aloud to yourself several times. Notice that your voice falls into a pattern of stressing every other word. (Each word happens to be one syllable in this example.) Thus you are likely to stress yet, times, hope, verse, stand. You might think of that alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables as the ideal pattern behind the poem: perfect iambic pentameter. But no one speaking normally would say the first line of the poem that way. Say that line several times to yourself. Perhaps you stress Like, waves, make, peb-, shore. The result is to create a rhythm similar to but interestingly different from the iambic pentameter pattern. That is what most lines of a sonnet will be like.
Sometimes accents are certain or nearly so: the word "pebbled" has to be accented on the first syllable because that is how it is pronounced in English. Sometimes a reader can choose: thus you might accent "our" in the second line, or you might not. The choice you make affects the meaning and feeling of the line. A good reader chooses a pattern of stress that clarifies the meaning of the poem and supports the various poetic effects. The syllables in boldface below illustrate one way of accenting the poem:
Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end,
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
Sometimes the lines are divided up into feet in imitation of classical meter in Latin and Greek. Thus the first line can be divided as follows:
Like as / the waves / make toward/ the peb / bled shore.
Notice that most of the feet have the iambic pattern of unaccented syllable followed by accented: "the waves." Such a foot is called an iamb. Penta- means five, and the line is a pentameter because it has five feet. There are names for the feet that vary. "Like as" is a trochee or trochaic foot. "Each chang-" is a spondee or spondaic foot. In line 2 "-en to" is a pyrrhic or pyrrhic foot. The value of these technical terms is to be able to point clearly to rhythmic effects, but the main point is for you to train your ear to hear the rhythmic variations and to explore with your own voice how you can use them to contribute to meaning and feeling.
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