Sir Phillip Sidney's Sonnet #47 from Astrophil and Stella
Sir Phillip Sidney's Sonnet # 47 from Astrophil and Stella The sonnet is a short concise form of writing and it takes a great mind to master it. By mastering it, I mean to be able to say so much in what seems like so little space. Sir Phillip Sidney comes as close to mastering it as anyone else in his time or any other does. As the opening line says, this is about a betrayal. Strangely enough, the last line of the sonnet ends with a word that is the very essence of betrayal. The sonnet ends with the word, lie. This would cause one to expect to get an explanation of the betrayal between the first and last lines. This appears to be a story of both love and betrayal. In the sonnet, it is love that betrays. The narrator opens the sonnet with a question to himself. He wants to know if he has betrayed his own liberty or his freedom. The next three lines of this quatrain use imagery of slavery. The narrator is struggling in knowing if he were born free or if he were born a slave to this love. He raises a question in the closing line of the quatrain, if anyone can handle the confines of love and the boundaries it seems to place on a person. The first quatrain uses such dark imagery that for Americans today brings up thoughts of the Civil War. The fact is, slavery as Americans today think of it was not around in Sidney's time. He wrote Astrophil and Stella around three hundred years before the Civil War. Also, the way Sidney lays out the first quatrain is peculiar. A single line that is not indented is placed, followed by a couplet that Sidney indents, which is then followed by the last line that is not indented. The same format is used in the next quatrain as well. In th...
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...someone else in order to know what love is not. The narrator of this sonnet is saying that he knows what love is not but by saying that, he is saying that he knows what it is. Once a person goes through a close relationship where they discover love for the very first time, they are more prepared to find love in life because they know what feeling it is that they are looking for. The sad thing is it usually takes the breaking of a heart in order for one to know the meaning or feeling of true love but through this they become better prepared for the road ahead of them. This sonnet holds true to the fact that a lot can be said in so little space. What exactly is said is always determined by the reader and what he or she gets out of it. Fourteen short lines can that can raise so many questions, feelings and emotions can surely be considered a great piece of literature.
In “Sonnet,” Billy Collins satirizes the classical sonnet’s volume to illustrate love in only “…fourteen lines…” (1). Collins’s poem subsists as a “Sonnet,” though there exists many differences in it countering the customarily conventional structure of a sonnet. Like Collins’s “Sonnet,” Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130” also faces incongruities from the classic sonnet form as he satirizes the concept of ideal beauty that was largely a convention of writings and art during the Elizabethan era. Although these poem venture through different techniques to appear individually different from the classic sonnet, the theme of love makes the poems analogous.
In this collection of sonnets, love is basically and apparently everything. It 's very prevalent in each sonnet contained. It 's easy to see that loving her beloved, her husband, is the one of the ways actually knows she exists. She tries to list the many different types of love that she so obviously feels, and also to figure out the many different types of relationships between these vast and different kinds of love. Through her endeavors, this seems to become a new way of thoroughly expressing her admiration and vast affection for her
It speaks about not allowing anything to break the marital bond not even old age or sickness. The united couple must stand together and not allow their hearts to wander. In the beginning of the poem, the first question asked of the bride and groom is if there are any admitted impediment that would hinder or corrupt this union. Shakespeare even allows the reader to understand that he truly believes the words that he writes by stating, “If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved” (Sonnet 481). Shakespeare interjects his personal beliefs by telling the reader that if this poem is not true, then he was never was a writer, and that no man has ever
...e speaker admits she is worried and confused when she says, “The sonnet is the story of a woman’s struggle to make choices regarding love.” (14) Her mind is disturbed from the trials of love.
The next new perspective on love comes from Shakespeare’s “Sonnet One Hundred and Sixteen”. “Sonnet One Hundred and Sixteen” “sets forth an ideal of true love as something permanent and never changing” (Kastan 17). Integrated throughout the poem are various circumstances in which true
"Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal [but] which the reader recognizes as his own." (Salvatore Quasimodo). There is something about the human spirit that causes us to rejoice in shared experience. We can connect on a deep level with our fellow man when we believe that somehow someone else understands us as they relate their own joys and hardships; and perhaps nowhere better is this relationship expressed than in that of the poet and his reader. For the current assignment I had the privilege (and challenge) of writing an imitation of William Shakespeare’s "Sonnet 87". This poem touched a place in my heart because I have actually given this sonnet to someone before as it then communicated my thoughts and feelings far better than I could. For this reason, Sonnet 87 was an easy choice for this project, although not quite so easy an undertaking as I endeavored to match Shakespeare’s structure and bring out his themes through similar word choice.
At the time of its writing, Shakespeare's one hundred thirtieth sonnet, a highly candid, simple work, introduced a new era of poems. Shakespeare's expression of love was far different from traditional sonnets in the early 1600s, in which poets highly praised their loved ones with sweet words. Instead, Shakespeare satirizes the tradition of comparing one's beloved to the beauties of the sun. From its opening phrase "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun", shocks the audience because it does not portray a soft, beautiful woman. Despite the negative connotations of his mistress, Shakespeare speaks a true woman and true love. The sonnet is a "how-to" guide to love.
In Sonnet number one-hundred sixteen Shakespeare deals with the characteristics of a love that is “not time’s fool”, that true love that will last through all (Ln: 9). This sonnet uses the traditional Shakespearian structure of three quatrains and a couplet, along with a standard rhyme scheme. The first and third quatrains deal with the idea that love is “an ever-fixed mark”, something that does not end or change over time (Ln: 5). Shakespeare illustrates this characteristic of constancy through images of love resisting movemen...
Shakespeare's sonnets are a romantic and charming series of poems. His use of rhyme and passionate, eloquent language serve to illuminate his strong feelings. These techniques were probably the most fluent way for such a writer as him to express the immeasurable love that he obviously felt for his mysterious lady. Examining the numerous ways Shakespeare found to describe it, the reader believes that this love was undoubtedly lasting and authentic. He often made heart-felt comments about his emotions that could also suit lovers in the present day. Because of this, and the fact that people read them yet, Shakespeare's sonnets are timeless and universal, just like the concept of love itself.
In Elizabeth Browning’s poem ‘Sonnet 43’, Browning explores the concept of love through her sonnet in a first person narrative, revealing the intense love she feels for her beloved, a love which she does not posses in a materialistic manner, rather she takes it as a eternal feeling, which she values dearly, through listing the different ways she loves her beloved.
In “Sonnet XVII,” the text begins by expressing the ways in which the narrator does not love, superficially. The narrator is captivated by his object of affection, and her inner beauty is of the upmost significance. The poem shows the narrator’s utter helplessness and vulnerability because it is characterized by raw emotions rather than logic. It then sculpts the image that the love created is so personal that the narrator is alone in his enchantment. Therefore, he is ultimately isolated because no one can fathom the love he is encountering. The narrator unveils his private thoughts, leaving him exposed and susceptible to ridicule and speculation. However, as the sonnet advances toward an end, it displays the true heartfelt description of love and finally shows how two people unite as one in an overwhelming intimacy.
Sonnet 71 is one of 154 sonnets written by William Shakespeare, and although it may rank fairly low on the popularity scale, it clearly demonstrates a pessimistic and morbid tone. With the use of metaphors, personification, and imagery this sonnet focuses on the poet’s feelings about his death and how the young should mourn him after he has died. Throughout the sonnet, there appears to be a continual movement of mourning, and with a profound beauty that can only come from Shakespeare. Shakespeare appeals to our emotional sense of “feeling” with imagery words like vile, dead, be forgot, and decay, and we gain a better understanding of the message and feelings dictated by the speaker.
This sonnet is an anti-love poem that ironically shows how the fairness of a lady is contingent upon nature's blessings and her external manifestations. The Spenserian style brings unity to this sonnet, in that it's theme and rhyme is interwoven throughout, but the focus of her "fairness" is divided into an octave and a sestet. The first eight lines praise her physical features (hair, cheeks, smile), while the last six lines praise her internal features (words, spirit, heart). This sonnet intentionally hides the speaker's ridicule behind counterfeit love-language, using phrases like: "fair golden hairs" (line 1), and "rose in her red cheeks" (line 3), and "her eyes the fire of love does spark" (line 4). This traditional love language fills pages of literature and song, and has conventionally been used to praise the attributes of a lover; but this sonnet betrays such language by exhibiting a critique rather than commendation. This sonnet appears to praise the beauty of a lady but ironically ridicules her by declaring that her "fairness" is contingent upon nature, physical features, and displaying a gentle spirit, which hides her pride.
In addition, the sonnet is a statement of respect about the beauty of his beloved; summ...
Shakespeare’s sonnets include love, the danger of lust and love, difference between real beauty and clichéd beauty, the significance of time, life and death and other natural symbols such as, star, weather and so on. Among the sonnets, I found two sonnets are more interesting that show Shakespeare’s love for his addressee. The first sonnet is about the handsome young man, where William Shakespeare elucidated about his boundless love for him and that is sonnet 116. The poem explains about the lovers who have come to each other freely and entered into a relationship based on trust and understanding. The first four lines reveal the poet’s love towards his lover that is constant and strong and will not change if there any alternation comes. Next four lines explain about his love which is not breakable or shaken by the storm and that love can guide others as an example of true love but that extent of love cannot be measured or calculated. The remaining lines of the third quatrain refer the natural love which can’t be affected by anything throughout the time (it can also mean to death). In the last couplet, if