Poetic Form

Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 73”

The second quatrain in prose:
In me you see the end of a day
After the sun sets in the west
The night then comes and takes the light away
Sleeping marks the end

Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare is composed of three quatrains as well as one couplet for a total of 14 lines. There is an ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme. Each of the three quatrains talks about a different subject even though they all have something in common. The first quatrain describes a season coming to an end while the second and third quatrain describes a day in addition to a person’s life expiring.
The form of the sonnet is intricate to the meaning of the sonnet because transitioning from one quatrain to another enables us to see changes in the duration of something’s existence. The season is considered to be a long amount of time, while the day is relatively shorter, and then we have the fire which has the shortest existence of the three. All three quatrains deal with something that must eventually come to an end. What poetic form accomplishes that prose does not is that with poetic form, you're able to play around with words (rhyme for example) while in prose, things are stated in a more straight forward and formal way. In poetry, you don’t have to follow the rules of grammar and punctuation. You’re free to express yourself without any boundaries. When writing in prose, grammar and punctuation is a must in order maintain the structure needed.