What Is The Mood Of The Poem Idea 20 By Michael Drayton

533 Words2 Pages

“Idea 20: An evil spirit, your beauty, haunts me still”, is a poem by Michael Drayton, a poet from the 1800s. The older English language is used throughout and is a sonnet that speaks of his overpowering and crippling love for someone. The poem uses devices such as a longing and tortured tone, being a romantic sonnet and a lyric poem. Drayton uses the voice of the lyric poem, which expresses love filled and tortured emotions of himself and uses first person pronouns. He uses this frequently by writing “In me it speaks, whether I sleep or wake; And when by means to drive it out I try, With greater torments then it me doth take, And tortures me in most extremity” (lines 5-8). He uses “me”, “I” and “your”, pronouns directed at himself. The emotion that takes place is tortured love. The love leaves him in anguish and doesn’t seem to leave him be. The form of the lyric poem really conveys his passionate emotions and helps the reader to understand how upset and stressed he is by this love because it is so personal. …show more content…

Sonnets are romantic, fourteen line poems. Drayton’s poem is filled with love and while it is not necessarily a positive love, it is speaking of the anguish caused by this love. The romance is very clear throughout almost every line, only a few being “An evil spirit, your beauty, haunts me still, Wherewith, alas, I have been long possess'd, Which ceaseth not to tempt me to each ill, Nor gives me once but one poor minute's rest” (lines 1-4). He goes as far as to call the person’s beauty an evil spirit, which is a metaphor to stress how the beauty is taking over him that it’s become evil and unwanted. He has been possessed by this love and it’s driving him crazy by not giving him a moments rest. The romance is extremely overpowering in this sonnet and helps the reader to understand the love in few

Show More
Related

  • Speakig to His Lover in Shakespeare’s Sonnet #23

    1266 Words  | 3 Pages

    Shakespeare’s Sonnet #23 is addressed to the lovely young man, called WH. The speaker is trying to convey his complex feeling towards his lover. He is tongue-tied in the young man’s company and he is trying to explain this awkwardness and express his complex emotions in this sonnet. It is, the speaker says, due to the hugeness of his love, that makes it too heavy to carry. For the author this sonnet is a silent representation of his inner voice. To show the complexity of the situation, he compares poet’s role as a lover to an actor’s timidity onstage. He asks WH to read these silent lines and explains that love will give him the insight to read between lines. The sonnet consists of 14 lines, which are splitted into octave and a sestet, and has typical for Shakespeare’s sonnets rhyme scheme: a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g. He uses first two quatrains to establish a problem and then resolves it in a third quatrain, summarizing solution in the following couplet.

    Read More

  • Copmaring Shakespeare's Sonnets 116 and 147

    1485 Words  | 3 Pages

    To understand these two sonnets completely, one must first have a little background information concerning the sequence of the Sonnets and William Shakespeare's life. Shakespeare's series of Sonnets can be divided, "into two sections, the first (numbers 1-126) being written to or about a young man, and most of those in the second (numbers 127-154) being written to or about a dark woman" (Wilson 17-8). Because of the autobiographical nature of Shakespeare's Sonnets, these two characters are people from Shakespeare's actual life. The young man is Shakespeare's patron and Shakespeare has a "humble and selfless adoration [that] he feels for his young friend" (Wilson 32). The dark woman is Shakespeare's lover, a woman that infatuates him. These two people provide an emotional contrast for each other and Shakespeare's views on love. When these two meet, they have an affair, "behavior that, as the Poet [Shakespeare] is really deeply in love with the woman, causes him such distress, at times agony, as to introduce a note of tragedy into the series [of sonnets], . . ." (Wilson 33). The affair between the young man and the dark woman is the catalyst for Shakespeare's au...

    Read More

  • Free College Essays - Analysis of Shakespeare's Sonnet 75

    948 Words  | 2 Pages

    The sonnet opens with a seemingly joyous and innocent tribute to the young friend who is vital to the poet's emotional well being. However, the poet quickly establishes the negative aspect of his dependence on his beloved, and the complimentary metaphor that the friend is food for his soul decays into ugly imagery of the poet alternating between starving and gorging himself on that food. The poet is disgusted and frightened by his dependence on the young friend. He is consumed by guilt over his passion. Words with implicit sexual meanings permeate the sonnet -- "enjoyer", "treasure", "pursuing", "possessing", "had" -- as do allusions to five of the seven "deadly" sins -- avarice (4), gluttony (9, 14), pride (5), lust (12), and envy (6).

    Read More

  • In This Strange Labyrinth, by Mary Wroth

    655 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...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.

    Read More

  • Shakespeare's Love To The Dark Lady Analysis

    979 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Astrophil And Stella

    990 Words  | 2 Pages

    For the reader to grasp the concept that this sonnet is about writer’s block Sidney has to cement the idea that Astrophil is a writer. In this duality, being both the star lover and writer, we begin to see Stella as a metaphor for a writer’s work and audience. Opening the sonnet with a profession of love for Stella, the object of Astrophil’s affection, he is hurt that he does not have her love. In the view of a passionate writer it is as if some critic has said that you are or your work is inadequate and without their approval. In order to gain the critics or Stella’s love he w...

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Shakespeare's Sonnet 75 And Sonnet 116

    1314 Words  | 3 Pages

    The love described in this sonnet is a dangerous, obsessive, and possessive love. Fenghua Ma states “the love that appears in Shakespeare’s early works takes on a bright and optimistic look” (Ma 920). Following Shakespeare’s early works, he transitioned to a period focused primarily on themes discussing tragic love. In a sense, the development of the theme in Sonnet 75 could be compared to Shakespeare 's career. The beginning of the sonnet discusses how essential the narrator 's lover is to his life. However, as the sonnet continues, the positive, optimistic view of love disappears, just as Shakespeare 's themes transitioned from optimistic views of love to tragic love throughout his career. On certain days, the narrator describes that he is over satisfied by looking at his lover excessively, but on other days, he is deprived of not having seen his lover at all. Shakespeare writes, “Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day, / Or gluttoning on all, or all away” (Shakespeare l.13-14). The narrator is admitting to having an obsession and unhealthy relationship with his lover. He either sees too much or not enough of his

    Read More

  • Comparing and Contrasting Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 and Clause McKay's The Harlem Dancer

    603 Words  | 2 Pages

    The speaker uses metaphors to describe his mistress’ eyes to being like the sun; her lips being red as coral; cheeks like roses; breast white as snow; and her voices sounding like music. In the first few lines of the sonnet, the speaker view and tells of his mistress as being ugly, as if he was not attracted to her. He give...

    Read More

  • Love and Hate in Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part

    2252 Words  | 5 Pages

    The 1st section of the poem, lines 1 through 8, contains the majority of the poem's theme. Drayton, without much introduction, leads his readers right into the sonnet's subject. He, directly addressing his X-lover, says, "Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part." From the very first line, we know the poet has doomed this relationship to end. The phrase "there's no help" indicates to us a frustration between the two parties involved in this relationship. Instead of proving to his readers that this relationship is doomed, Drayton takes this point as fact and builds on it in the second half of the line "come let us kiss and part." The tone in this half is one of acceptance. Since the couple can do nothing more to redeem their failing relationship, they willingly acquiesce to this fact and move on. The term "kiss and part" gives the reader a terminal feeling to this relationship. It's as if two acquaintances part at the airport not caring that they will never see one another again.

    Read More

  • Sonnet 18 And 130 Analysis

    630 Words  | 2 Pages

    In addition, the sonnet is a statement of respect about the beauty of his beloved; summ...

    Read More

  • The Concept Of Love In Elizabeth Browning's Sonnet 43

    861 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets From The Portuguese

    1205 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Sonnet XVII, by Pablo Neruda

    1177 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Sonnet Analysis - Fair Is My Love, by Edmund Spenser

    1276 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Exploration of Self in Matthew Arnold's The Buried Life

    952 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the second stanza of the poem, nearly all the lines reflect the characters feeling of powerlessness to put a voice to this inner struggle, to be...

    Read More

More about What Is The Mood Of The Poem Idea 20 By Michael Drayton

Open Document