Could someone please explain iambic pentameter?
If it’s really just the iambic pentameter (the meter) that you’re trying to understand and not the meaning of the poem, it’s simply this: any iambic meter is made up of poetic “feet” that each consist of an unstressed, or unaccented, syllable followed by a stressed (accented) one. PENTAmeter contains five poetic feet. Thus iambic pentameter goes “a ONE, a TWO, a THREE, a FOUR, a FIVE.” Shakespeare’s line “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” is an example, although we don’t actually stress the “to” the way a strict reading of the meter would require. (In English, any classical poetic meter often has a slight irregularily here or there to keep it from being monotonous.) The poem you quote does this at the beginning: The reader stresses “as” and “fond” more than “a.” Incidentally, this sonnet is not Shakespearean in either sense. In form, it’s a Petrarchan or Italian sonnet, since lines 1, 4, 5, and 8 rhyme, as do lines 2, 3, 6, and 7, and then there are three new rhyming sounds in l
