Caudate or Tailed Sonnet

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The Caudate Sonnet, sometimes called a Tailed Sonnet, is an extended sonnet with a coda or tail added at the end. It was first attributed to the Italian poet Francesco Berni (1497-1536). This sonnet verse form is often used for satire.

The elements of the Caudate Sonnet are:

1. strophic, a Petrarchan Sonnet, followed by a 1/2 line and a heroic couplet, this may also be followed by additional "tails". The tail and couplet are akin to the Bob and Wheel. The poem can be from 17 to 24 lines.
2. metric, the sonnet portion is iambic pentameter. The tail line is iambic trimeter and the subsequent couplets are iambic pentameter.
3. rhymed, abbaabbacdcdcd dee . The rhyme scheme using 24 lines as in the following Hopkins poem is abbaabbacdcdcd dee cff fgg g.

   THAT NATURE IS A HERACLITEAN FIRE by Gerard Manley Hopkins

   CLOUD-PUFFBALL, torn tufts, tossed pillows ' flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
   built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs ' they throng; they glitter in marches.
   Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ' wherever an elm arches,
   Shivelights and shadowtackle in long ' lashes lace, lance, and pair.
   Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ' ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
   Of yestertempest's creases; in pool and rut peel parches
   Squandering ooze to squeezed ' dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
   Squadroned masks and manmarks ' treadmire toil there
   Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, ' nature's bonfire burns on.
   But quench her bonniest, dearest ' to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
   Man, how fast his firedint, ' his mark on mind, is gone!
   Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
   Drowned. O pity and indig ' nation! Manshape, that shone
   Sheer off, disseveral, a star, ' death blots black out; nor mark
   Is any of him at all so stark
   But vastness blurs and time ' beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
   A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, ' joyless days, dejection.
   Across my foundering deck shone
   A beacon, an eternal beam. ' Flesh fade, and mortal trash
   Fall to the residuary worm; ' world's wildfire, leave but ash:
   In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
   I am all at once what Christ is, ' since he was what I am, and
   This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ' patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
   Is immortal diamond.

Caudated Sonnet by Jan Haag

The French develop their own sonnet form the French Sonnet or Rondel Prime

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