LIKE THIS, FOR INSTANCE

A sonnet is a pearl surrounding grit,
A crystal coalesced about a seed:
It takes the smallest irritant to feed
A process that provokes the play of wit.

A question, observation, urge will sit
Amidst the mind then generate and breed
A brood of new ideas that proceed
To intertwine till sound and sense both fit.

But just as pearls can be irregular
In shape, their color lusterless and dull,
So sonnets only rarely make the grade:
Most prove insipid, lame, and fail to stir
Emotions in the soul, rhetorical
But not poetical, and doomed to fade.

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