I Will Put Chaos Into Fourteen Lines

Millay wrote “I will put Chaos into fourteen lines” as a sonnet, meaning it is a single-stanza work consisting of 14 lines. There are a number of traditional sonnet rhyme patterns, including the Spenserian, Shakespearean, and Petrarchan sonnets, among others. The rhyme scheme this particular Millay text follows is ABBAABBA for the initial octave (eight lines), and CDCDCD for the remaining sestet (six lines). This rhyme scheme classifies Millay’s text as a Petrarchan sonnet. The sonnet form was a poetic structure developed in Italy during the 13th century, and Petrarch wrote his sonnet sequence in Italy in the 14th century. More specifically, the rhyme in Millay’s sonnet is identifiable as masculine rhyme, defined as “a monosyllabic rhyme or a rhyme that occurs only in stressed final syllables” (“Masculine Rhyme.” Britannica, 2022). For example, the second and third lines of the sonnet rhyme “escape” (Line 2) with “ape” (Line 3). While “escape” (Line 2) consists of two syllables as opposed to the monosyllabic “ape” (Line 3), both words rhyme on the final (or only) stressed syllable/sound. In contrast, a rhyme classified as “feminine rhyme” features rhyming of multiple syllables.