There are two different types of sonnets. There are the Petrarchan (italian) sonnets, and of course, Shakespearean (english) sonnets. The rhyme scheme for the Shakespearean sonnets is abab cdcd efef and ends with a rhyming couplet of gg. In the 1609 Quarto, 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets had been published, all of which were written in iambic pentameter.
Sonnets 1-17: Celebrates the beauty of a young man and urges him to marry so as to propagate and preserve that beauty. (qtd. "Introduction to Sonnets")
Sonnets 18-126:The subsequent long sequence focuses on (probably) the same ideal young man, developing as a dominant motif the transience and destructive power of time, countered only by the force of love and friendship and the permanence of poetry. (qtd. "Introduction to Sonnets")
Sonnets 127-154:Focus on the so-called Dark Lady as a tempting but degrading object of desire. Some sonnets describe a love triangle of the speaker, the close friend, and the girlfriend. (qtd. "Introduction to Sonnets")
Below, I have chosen one sonnet from each "category" above.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Sonnet 12
When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls ensilvered o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard:
Then of thy beauty do I question make
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake,
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing 'gainst time's scythe can make defence
Save breed to brave him when he takes thee hence.
Sonnet 18
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Sonnet 139
O, call not me to justify the wrong
That thy unkindness lays upon my heart.
Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue;
Use power with power, and slay me not by art.
Tell me thou lov'st elsewhere, but in my sight,
Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside.
What need'st thou wound with cunning when thy might
Is more than my o'erpressed defence can bide?
Let me excuse thee: `Ah, my love well knows
Her pretty looks have been mine enemies,
And therefore from my face she turns my foes
That they elsewhere might dart their injuries."
Yet do not so; but since I am near slain,
Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain.
