Sonnet

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/244840

[Sonnet]

BY GEORGE HENRY BOKER

Brave comrade, answer! When you joined the war,

    What left you? “Wife and children, wealth and friends,

    A storied home whose ancient roof-tree bends

    Above such thoughts as love tells o’er and o’er.”

Had you no pang or struggle? “Yes; I bore

    Such pain on parting as at hell’s gate rends

    The entering soul, when from its grasp ascends

    The last faint virtue which on earth it wore.”

You loved your home, your kindred, children, wife;

    You loathed yet plunged into war’s bloody whirl!—

    What urged you? “Duty! Something more than life.

That which made Abraham bare the priestly knife,

    And Isaac kneel, or that young Hebrew girl

    Who sought her father coming from the strife.

In this sonnet, Boker speaks of deep, almost divine need to serve for one's country. Due to the ABBA, ABBA, CDECDE rhyme scheme, this sonnet is a Petrarchan, or Italian sonnet. I believe Boker didn't do any significant changes to the form because the volta happens at the beginning of the sestet. The poem goes from a more general, inquisitive situation to an accusing tone, then shifts even more (which could be a modification) to become religious with allusions to the Bible. 

I picked this sonnet because I admired the speaker's deep need to serve for the greater good though he knew the struggles he would face. I think Boker didn't kept the form of his sonnet straightforward in order to support the straightforwardness of the speaker's choice to sacrifice his "wife and children, wealth and friends" in order to fight.