Question: Provide me with a detailed reading of D. G. Rossetti's
"The Sonnet" and, if you wish, the accompanying design Rossetti
executed for his mother. (Click here for the image and the
sonnet.) Pay special attention to such issues as the following:
the reasons the poet chose the verse form he did; the relation
between the form of the poem and its content; the effect of such
stylistic devices as alliteration, assonance, regular, internal
and slant rhymes, meter variation, caesuras, enjambement, line
breaks, etc.; and the relation of the poem to its literary
historical context. You may also comment on the design but be
sure always to relate the design to the poem itself, which
should always remain your focus. from The House of Life A Sonnet
is a moment's monument Memorial from the Soul's eternity To one
dead deathless hour. Look that it be, Whether for lustral rite
or dire portent, Of its own intricate fulness reverent: Carve it
in ivory or in ebony, As Day or Night prevail; and let Time see
Its flowering cr