Some other possibilities for the sestet include CDDCDD, CDDECE, or CDDCCD (as in Wordsworth's 'Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent's Narrow Room,' a sonnet about sonnets).
Petrarch typically used CDECDE or CDCDCD for the sestet. The rhyme scheme for the octave is typically ABBAABBA. The original Italian sonnet form consists of a total of fourteen hendecasyllabic lines (in English sonnets, iambic pentameter is used ) in two parts, the first part being an octave and the second being a sestet. Because of the structure of Italian, the rhyme scheme of the Petrarchan sonnet is more easily fulfilled in that language than in English. The Petrarchan sonnet, also known as the Italian sonnet, is a sonnet named after the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca, although it was not developed by Petrarch himself, but rather by a string of Renaissance poets.
