In William Wordsworth’s poem, “Nuns Fret Not,” Wordsworth’s main motif is his wish to feel free and not bound to an everyday day routine like others tend to do. In the first half of the sonnet Wordsworth describes the physical places some people are bound to. The Nuns are bound to “their convent’s narrow room,” the hermits to their cells and the students at the citadels. What all of these characters have in common is that the places that they are all confined to are physical places that are all narrow and small. The maids, weaver and bees are not confined to a physical place but are confined to their jobs. All of these places with exception to the foxglove bells that the bees go to have a negative connotation to them. The places are described as being “narrow” and “cells.” When he describes these places he cannot understand why the people trapped within them seem so satisfied with their lives. When he realizes that the bees are satisfied because they go to the “foxglove bells” he realizes that sometimes it is fine to be confined because it gives life meaning.

After analyzing the life of others and the places they are confined to, Wordsworth begins to analyze his own life and the place he is confined to as a writer. He talks about the prison “unto which we doom ourselves, no prison is.” The so called prison that we put ourselves in to, he realizes that it is actually a place where he, as well as others, can feel comfort and find happiness. In these lines he also mentions “the sonnets scanty plot of ground.” Here he was able to find “solace” when he “felt the weight of the too much liberty.” He enjoyed feeling confined for just a moment and realized why the others where contempt and happy with their own form of confinement. The poet also wishes for other writers, poets or even readers to feel the solace of “the sonnet’s scanty plot of ground.”

The sonnet was a popular form of poetry which began and became popular around the 14^th century. It was normally written in a lyrical form and was often sang and accompanied by music. Some researchers believe that the sonnet was used to express certain feelings the poet had. They were usually written in sequences that came together and told the audience a story. The tweet can be argued to be a modern form of the sonnet. Both the tweet and the sonnet have a limited amount of words or lines that they can use when expressing themselves. The sonnet is expected to have 14 lines and be written in one of the three following forms: Petrarchan, Spenserian and Shakespearean. The tweet has a 140 character limit or less. Both the tweet and the sonnet are used to express the feelings that a poet or tweeters are feeling at a certain point in time.

             

In Edmund Spenser’s Sonnet 75, he expresses his problem by the rhythm he uses within the lines. He begins most of the lines of the sonnet with a spondee. Only when one of the problems arises with the woman he loves does the line change from a spondee to iamb in line six when she disagrees with him and tells him it is impossible to immortalize something mortal. This is the turning point of the poem because the poet is being challenged by the woman he loves. He then goes on to say that he will be able to immortalize her through his words and no challenges will prevent him from doing so. The couplet at the end of the sonnet provides the sonnet with a sense of closure. It does so by explaining that even though death may take them away, their love will live on and it will renew itself in a later life. The later life that their life will live on in is in other lovers that become inspired by their love. The couplet in this sense gives the poem closure because the poet has resolved the problem that was first introduced by the challenges he faced when trying to immortalize his love.