Endless Gaze

by JOSEPH BRYANT (Italian Stallion)

Within my heart
An endless gaze
Of love displays
Never apart
Or about to depart
From my loving ways
And my praise
Which I’ve given from the start

My heart I give to you
The sound of love, singing from within
From within this lifetime
In which I’ve come to adore
Like the sound of a violin
That I’ve heard within my lifetime

© Copyright 2007 By: Italian Stallion

*The Italian sonnet is divided into two sections by two different groups of rhyming sounds. The first 8 lines is called the octave and rhymes: abbaabba

The remaining 6 lines is called the sestet and can have either two or three rhyming sounds, arranged in a variety of ways:

c d c d c d
c d d c d c
c d e c d e
c d e c e d
c d c e d c

The exact pattern of sestet rhymes (unlike the octave pattern) is flexible. In strict practice, the one thing that is to be avoided in the sestet is ending with a couplet (dd or ee), as this was never permitted in Italy, and Petrarch himself (supposedly) never used a couplet ending; in actual practice, sestets are sometimes ended with couplets