<P> Later, the abba, abba pattern became the standard for Italian sonnets . For the sestet there were two different possibilities: cde, cde and cdc, cdc . In time, other variants on this rhyming scheme were introduced, such as cdcdcd . Petrarch typically used an abba, abba pattern for the octave, followed by either cde, cde or cdc, cdc rhymes in the sestet . (The symmetries (abba vs. cdc) of these rhyme schemes have also been rendered in musical structure in the late 20th century composition Scrivo in Vento by Elliott Carter, inspired by Petrarch's Sonnet 212, Beato in Sogno .) </P> <P> In English, both the English or Shakespearean sonnet, and the Italian Petrarchan sonnet are traditionally written in iambic pentameter . </P> <P> The first known sonnets in English, written by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, used the Italian, Petrarchan form, as did sonnets by later English poets, including John Milton, Thomas Gray, William Wordsworth and Elizabeth Barrett Browning . Early twentieth - century American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay also wrote mostly Petrarchan sonnets . </P> <P> On His Blindness by Milton, gives a sense of the Petrarchan rhyme scheme: </P>

Who used sonnet for the first time in england