Many works of poetry have the common trait of using the primary elements of poetry to convey the significance of the poem. William Shakespeare, a well-known and master poet of the sixteenth century, uses these elements to express the meaning in each of his poems and sonnets. In Shakespeare's poem, "Like as the Waves make Towards the Pebbled Shore," the elements of external form, tone, speaker, and internal structure are used to express the point.
             The external form of this poem is an important element in the development, meaning, and understanding of it. Dominating English poetry in the late sixteenth century, sonnets make up a large portion of Shakespeare's works of poetry. A sonnet is a type of poem that is made up of fourteen lines in one stanza and is generally contained and compact. Shakespeare uses the sonnet form in "Like as the Waves make Towards the Pebbled Shore" for this reason and because the form is best suited to intensity of feeling and concentration of expression. The style of sonnet that Shakespeare uses commonly is one in which the sonnet itself is divided into three units of four lines each and a final unit of two lines. This type of sonnet also follows a rhyme scheme in which the last word of the first line in each unit rhymes with that of the third line, the last word of the second line with that of the fourth, and the last words in the final unit of two lines rhyme with each other. "Like as the Waves make Towards the Pebbled Shore" follows this scheme perfectly as in the first unit of four lines, "pebbled shore" rhymes with "which goes before" and "to their end" with "do contend." Known as the English sonnet, this form of poetry is able to set up a series of brief, cumulative images that effectively relay the meaning of the poem to the reader.
             The sounds and silences of the words and sentences in a
             ...