Since narrative poems main purpose is to tell a story, it can be assumed that these poems are relatively long in length. This can be ruled out since "Glanmore Sonnets IV" is only fourteen lines in length. Contentiously a lyric poem is usually a short poem expressing the thoughts and the feelings of a single speaker. This is a possible form of Heaney's poem so it can not be ruled out quite yet, and can be determined upon deciding the situation of the poem. A sonnet is defined as a fourteen line poem that has some type of rhyme scheme. As stated earlier, this poem has exactly fourteen lines, thus the poet intended to write a sonnet.
There are different types of sonnets that poets use when creating their poetry. The three most common forms of sonnets are the Italian, English, and Spensenan. To reveal which category this poem fits into, the rhyming schemes must be considered. The Italian form uses five different rhymes, in the pattern of, ABBAABBACDECDE. The first eight rhymes are an octet and the last six are called a sestet. The English form of a sonnet uses seven different rhymes rather than five, and has a couplet located on the last two lines of the poem. In alpha form this pattern appears as, ABABCDCDEFEFGG. The third form of a sonnet, known as Spensenan, is a combination of the English and Italian forms. The Spensenan uses five rhymes like the Italian form and has a couplet at the last two lines of the sonnet, and appears as ABABBCBCCDCDEE. The next step to decide which form this poem is most similar to is to take the last word of each line and make a rhyme pattern that fits the sonnet. The last word of the first line is "line" which has a slant rhyme with the last word of the third line, "tune." These two words do not have the same vowel sounds but they share the same ending consonant sound. The second and fourth lines, sound/ground, have a true rhyme because they have the same vowel and ending consonant sounds.
