title: Sonnet 139
text: # Sonnet 139
  
  Sonnet 139 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare.
  
  ## Structure
  
  Sonnet 139 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form ABAB CDCD EFEF GG and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The 6th line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:
  
      / = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus.
  
  Line 3 begins with a common metrical variation, an initial reversal:
  
  Initial reversals also occur in lines 5 and 14, and potentially in line 9. Line 13 exhibits a rightward movement of the fourth ictus (resulting in a four-position figure, × × / /, sometimes referred to as a minor ionic):
  
  The meter demands both occurrences of "power" in line 4 function as single syllables. The words "elsewhere" (lines 5 and 12) and "outright" (line 14) are double-stressed, and in this context move their stresses to the second syllable.
  
  