Octave
Quick answer: An octave is an eight-line stanza, above all the opening eight lines of a Petrarchan sonnet. Learn its rhyme schemes, uses, and how to write one well.
An octave is a unit of eight lines of verse. The word carries one meaning above all others: the first eight lines of a Petrarchan sonnet, rhymed ABBAABBA, which state the poem's situation, question, or complaint before the sestet answers at the turn. More generally, octave, like the alternative term octet, names any eight-line stanza, a length with its own distinguished careers in ottava rima and the Sicilian octave.
Eight lines is the stanza as full paragraph. It divides evenly into two quatrains or four couplets, so it can build an argument in stages and still feel like one breath. In the sonnet especially, the octave teaches a discipline every poet needs: how to set up a problem so completely that the answer becomes urgent.
How It Works
The Petrarchan octave's ABBAABBA is two envelope quatrains on only two rhyme sounds, which binds the eight lines into a single chamber; the effect in English, a rhyme-poor language, is of sustained pressure. Ottava rima, the other great eight-line design, runs ABABABCC, six lines of alternating build followed by a couplet that can land the stanza or pull the rug. An original sketch of the octave's job, compressed to four lines of the eight it would open:
Suppose the house is sold, the boxes taped, / and every wall shows squares of brighter paint / where pictures hung: the rooms we lived in, draped / in absence now, still hold us in restraint.
A full octave would extend that situation to eight lines and hand the sestet the reckoning.
Where You Will See It
Every Petrarchan sonnet opens with one: Milton's octave on his blindness lays out the whole grievance before patience replies, and Keats's sonnet on Chapman's Homer spends its octave travelling realms of gold so the sestet's discovery can strike. Ottava rima came from Boccaccio through the Italian epics into English, where Byron's Don Juan made its final couplet the most reliable comic trapdoor in the language, and Yeats later slowed the same stanza into the meditative grandeur of 'Sailing to Byzantium' and 'Among School Children'. The Sicilian octave, ABABABAB throughout, has its own entry and history.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Writing a sonnet, give the octave one situation and let it deepen rather than wander: two quatrains, two aspects of the same problem. Keep the pressure rising toward line eight so the volta has something to turn against. As a free-standing stanza, decide what your eighth line does, seals like ottava rima's couplet or opens a door to the next stanza, and hold that behaviour steady. An eight-line stanza with a working internal turn shows exactly the structural control that contest judges, Writory's included, reward when they score a poem's architecture.
What poets can take from this
- In a Petrarchan octave, use the two quatrains as two camera angles on one problem, not two problems.
- Let pressure accumulate toward line eight; a flat octave leaves the volta nothing to do.
- Trying ottava rima, reserve the couplet for wit or reversal; that is where the stanza keeps its spring.
- In English, allow slant rhyme across ABBAABBA; only two rhyme sounds in eight lines is a real demand.
- Practise writing octaves alone, problem statements with no answer, and notice how the missing sestet sharpens them.
Try it yourself
Write only the octave of a sonnet, eight lines rhymed ABBAABBA, posing a question you genuinely cannot answer. Stop at line eight and leave the sestet silent; let the white space be the reply.
Questions
What is the octave in a sonnet?
It is the sonnet's first eight lines, rhymed ABBAABBA in the Petrarchan tradition. The octave establishes the situation or problem, and the sestet that follows responds after the turn at line nine.
What is the difference between an octave and ottava rima?
Octave means any eight-line unit. Ottava rima is a specific eight-line stanza rhyming ABABABCC in heroic lines, used by Boccaccio, Byron, and Yeats, and famous for its closing couplet's comic or clinching power.
Is an octet the same as an octave?
In poetry, yes; both words describe an eight-line stanza, with octave preferred in sonnet contexts. Music uses the terms differently, an octave being an interval and an octet an ensemble of eight.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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