This poem is written in the style of a Petrarchan sonnet. We know this because the poem is 14 lines long: three quatrains (groups of four lines), a rhyming couplet (two lines), and the normal rhyme scheme. Although the form is typical of Petrarchan sonnets, the poet who uses it most heavily is Donne. Donne was an English metaphysical poet who lived from 1572 to 1631. His work pre-dating Herbert's by about fifteen years made him the leading poet of his time. Donne wrote on many subjects, but he is best known for his poems which challenge religious orthodoxy and debate the limits of human understanding and experience. One of his greatest achievements is the ability to write beautiful poems about religion when England had just experienced a series of devastating wars with Spain and France that killed or displaced nearly a quarter of its population. Here are some examples of sonnets by Donne: Sonnet 12 No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less as well as America; for not only does that clod represent a portion of the earth, but also all the people who ever lived thereon.