Rossetti's Sextet: Form Analysis

Lines 9 – 14 of “A Sonnet Is a Moment’s Monument” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals
The soul – its converse, to what Power ‘tis due-
Whether for tribute to the august appeals
Of Life or dower in Love’s high retinue,
It serve; or ‘mid the dark wharf’s cavernous breath,
In Charon’s palm it pay the toll to Death

PARAPHRASING
A sonnet is a coin, the front of it shows/ the soul, the back shows what theme fuels the sonnet/, whether it serves as a tribute to the majestic appeals/ of Life or gift in the presence of Love’s retinue(important people like at a hearing or dowry decision);/ or in the breath of the dark wharf, into Charon’s palm it pays the toll to Death.

The form of the second half – the sextet – of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Italian sonnet “A Sonnet Is a Moment’s Monument” visually and rhythmically affects the reading and meaning of the sonnet. Through use of syntax and visual form, Rossetti highlights three themes within his sonnet: the dual purpose of sonnet, the lighter, optimistic purposes of poetry, and the final couplet is dedicated to the motive of death. The sonnet style as well as the form of poetry allows him to use line breaks, punctuation, and rhythm creatively and highlight some of his ideas. Unfortunately, the sonnet form – specifically the Italian sonnet form – shackles him at the same time and limit him to a strict rhyme scheme and a general meter
Visually, Rossetti uses indentation to divide the lines into three sections, and as we shall see, these three sections all have their own characteristic form. The first section is dedicated to the duality of a sonnet. Rossetti emphasizes this syntactically by using a colon in the middle of the ninth line and a hyphen and comma in the middle of the tenth. This use of caesura rhythmically divides these two lines into parts, the colon and comma specifically divide their respective lines into two halves reinforce the idea of two sides of a coin that Rossetti discusses. The second section explains two common uses of the sonnet: to pay highlight the appeals of life, and to serve as a gift in the presence of love. These lines all form one clause, because they are both themes of positive happier sonnets. In contrast, the third section is a couplet that is solely dedicated to grave negative theme of death within sonnets. The rhyme scheme for this sextet is ABABCC, the couplet seemingly disturbs the pattern of the sextet and forcefully brings it to a halt, which emphasizes the theme of death in sonnets.
As we can see the sonnet allows Rossetti to accentuate his idea through its form, however due to the nature of the Italian sonnet and its strict rhyme scheme, it feels as though Rossetti often resorts to some odd vocabulary and syntax. Also, although Rossetti’s sonnet reads beautifully, the reader often finds himself slowly picking apart the knot that is his sentence structure, especially in the final sextet, which is made up completely of one rather long sentence.


On a personal note (not really part of this entry), I really liked this poem, especially the whole metafictional (there might be a better word for what I’m trying to say here) theme. A sonnet that talks about the nature of sonnets! Woah...