Poetry

In Mrs. Clinch’s class, we discussed multiple sonnets by both Edmund Spenser and Sir Philip Sydney. In Sir Thomas Wyatt’s Sonnet that was for homework, we discovered that the hunt that he talks about is a woman. He is in love with a woman who is a wife to a king. Because the first line states that he found a doe, it seems as if the woman desires to find another man as well. Furthermore, when it says “Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am: And wild for to hold, thought I seem tame” around the woman’s neck, it seems as if she were under control or a slave to a king.
In Spenser’s Sonnet 67, I saw the game or woman as a prize to the man. When we see him, the huntsman is weary after chasing this woman so long; however, right as he is about to forget about her, he sees her “thinking to quench her thirst at the next brook.” Is this from human nature? When the hunter was chasing the woman, the woman ignored, but when the hunter stopped chasing, the woman showed up in front of him. When analyzing this moment, the woman seems to be controlling him. The huntsman is a tool. The woman is only interested when the huntsman forget about her. Luckily, he marries the woman shown from “with her own good will her firmly tied.” The tied signifies when a couple ties their hands together when married. If seen from another prospective, the poem seems very flirtatious. I see a woman returning to a man only to play with his feelings only until she realizes her true feelings for him. Her “milder look” gives a clue that the woman no longer despises the man, but actually enjoys his company.
Sonnet 79 is very different from the other two. In the beginning, he seems to be insulting the woman. He says that she is “fair” or decent looking, but defines true fair right afterwards. This means that this woman does not have true beauty, but only physical beauty. Furthermore, the poet uses multiple definition for the word fair. It is defined as desirable, reputable, gentle, not violent, of character free from moral stain, unblemished, just, and equal. Amazingly, all these definitions are used within the poem. The moment where ‘fair’ is most smoothly used is “He only fair, and what he fair hath made;/ All other fair, like flower, untimely fade. The first fair relates to the fact that GOD is just and fair, but the second means that it is good. The “all other fair” refers to limited physical beauty, which will eventually fade with time. Spenser is an amazing poet who has done something I could have never fathomed.