Sonnet IV

[ellajam]

Hi, Adoran, I have issues with both content and meter. I'm no expert but it seems the first line is IP and the rest seems mostly trochaic(ish). It's not easy and I encourage you to keep working at it. Some notes are below.

It's in this moment beauty manifests
Within doey eyes and cordially white jacks I don't get white jacks.
Hidden inside contrast, do hearts climax
Subtle notes and soft keys accord her breasts accord her breasts is odd. Punctuation might help.

As skin meets in harmony on our chests
Moonlight ignites love like midnight lilacs  Lilacs seem to be ignited?
Under stars, on wooden framing our backs on wooden framing our backs makes no sense to me.
Beauty sleeps as quietly as love rests

But for how long will this moment so last? The "so" here and two lines down just seem wrong.
Shall it fade like darkness in the sunlight
And take our hearts to so romantic graves

Life is not as lovely as summer's days
Nor is death as gentle as summer's night
Love so deathly that which tragedy saves
I'm having trouble making sense of the last line, again punctuation might help. And I'm wonder why L9 has no end rhyme, I may be missing something.

Link to Basic Meter

Iambic: an iamb is made up of two syllables where the stress (or accent) is placed on the second syllable.

eg. "She CANnot FADE, though THOU hast NOT thy BLISS,
For EVer WILT thou LOVE, and SHE be FAIR!" (Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn".

Counting the accented (strongly stressed) syllables, you come up with five beats, hence these lines are in iambic pentameter, a meter which always starts a line on a soft stress and ends on a hard. Iambic meter gives a kind of sing-song, often soothing rhythm which is why it's so often used for love poetry.

Trochaic: A trochee is essentially the opposite of an iamb -- two syllables, HARD soft. Trochees give a strong beat, often like an exclamation, and are commonly employed in nursery rhymes because they make quite an impression.

eg. "SANta CLAUS you FAT old GIT".

If you look at Shakespeare's sonnets, you'll find that the Bard often slipped a trochee into the first line to make an impact, which is just what it does.

ETA: I've been looking at the sonnet forms, it looks closest to the Petrarchan, but I still don't get the end rhyme of L9. The volta looks right, good work on that.
http://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-3725.html