Its fairly simple language and syntax, along with the oddity of the meter, have led to suggestions that it was written much earlier than the other, more mature, sonnets. This sonnet has generally been considered by critics to be one of Shakespeare's slightest works. The meter demands that line 12's 'heaven' function as one syllable. A mid-line reversal occurs in line 14, and potentially in line 11.

Straight in her heart did mercy come, (145.5)Īn initial reversal also occurs in line 6, and potentially in line 4. Line 5 features a common metrical variation, an initial reversal:

= ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. Those lips that Love's own hand did make (145.1) The 1st line exemplifies a regular iambic tetrameter: However this sonnet is unique in the collection because, instead of iambic pentameter, it is written in iambic tetrameter, a poetic metre based on four (rather than five) pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. It follows the rhyme scheme of the form ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. Sonnet 145 is - in most respects - a fairly typical English or Shakespearean sonnet. But then when she notices how much pain she has caused her lover by saying that she may potentially hate him, she changes the way that she says it to assure him that she hates but does not hate him. It is written as a description of the feelings of a man who is so in love with a woman that hearing her say that 'she hates' something immediately creates a fear that she is referring to him. It is also the Shakespeare sonnet which uses the fewest letters. It forms part of the Dark Lady sequence of sonnets and is the only one written not in iambic pentameter, but instead tetrameter. Sonnet 145 is one of Shakespeare's sonnets.

Shakespeare sonnet iambic pentameter