I
No man has loved a lady more than I.
Her grace and beauty are beyond compare.
The sun has placed its light within her eye,
and gold can never match her shining hair.
Her skin is whiter still than any snow,
but for the rose that lent her cheeks its red,
and softer than the silk, if I could know
its touch, but I must sing of it instead.
For she is ever far away from me,
and I can only write these words of praise
which she will never have the joy to see,
and I shall love alone for all my days.
It is the soul of every poet’s art:
this beauty rises from a yearning heart.

II
Ah, what a poet am I! Such a wit
that all I can bring forth are others’ lines.
See, this is Petrarch—you remember it,
and others also. Every poet pines.
But what can I, except to borrow rhyme
from countless other men on this same theme?
For love has muted us throughout all time,
and how can words be given to a dream?
My mouth is dumb, dumb hands move empty quill
‘cross empty sheets. Dumb heart will yield no fire.
My lady will not light that flame, and still
she will not grant the grace that would inspire.
The greatest poet withers and would die
when lady her attention does deny.

Song

“I heard a poet at my door.
He cries and fills the world with song,
and I have heard him once before.
He sings of joy, he sings of wrong,
with passion no one can ignore.”

“It pleased me oft to find him here.
I yearned to hear his newest rhyme.
Those words were water to my ear,
they brought rich life to my dry time,
and so I loved and held them dear.”

“But what is this discovery?
The poet wrote his songs of joy
not for the sake of song? For me?
And now, new words he does employ,
of spite and death. How can this be?”

“I did no harm unto your name,
I did no harm unto your art,
do not recall the hurts you claim,
I did not touch your earthly heart.
Your mercy! But I bear no blame.”

I am a poet, and I know
the pain that crushes like the sea.
Your love, imagin’d, do I grow?
If truth does rend this source from me
I will unto another go.

Style and Form

“The Poet” is a sonnet sequence. Poem sequences are sets of poems linked together by a loose plot. Usually sequences consist of a single type of poem, such as the sonnet, but they can also include other poetic forms such as the song.

The sonnet is a fourteen-line poem with a set rhyme scheme. The rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyming syllables that end each line, and the rhyme scheme of the English sonnet is a-b-a-b c-d-c-d e-f-e-f g-g. The rhyme scheme creates a break between the twelfth and thirteenth lines, and the final rhyming of the last two lines accentuates them; the main thought or theme of the sonnet is usually summed up in these two lines. The meter of the sonnet in English is usually iambic pentameter (Murphy 964-965). Iambic pentameter is a rhythmic form where each line consists of five iambic feet. A foot is a grouping of stressed and unstressed syllables, and an iambic foot is a grouping of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable (Hamilton 16-19).

The song is a less highly structured poetic form. It can have any meter, rhyme scheme, number of lines, or number of stanzas (groups of lines). The tone of a song is usually lyrical, expressing more personal emotion. Common rhyme schemes used in songs from Elizabethan sonnet sequences are a-a-b-b-c-c, and a-b-a-b-a (Abrams 494, 497). I have used the latter of these. I have also used iambic tetrameter, a rhyme scheme that appears frequently in songs and uses four iambic feet.

Historical Models

The model for “The Poet” is Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella. Written in 1582, this is a typical Elizabethan sonnet sequence. It follows the course of a lover’s infatuation with a lady, his praise of her beauty, his frustration when she does not reciprocate his love, and a lack of resolution at the end of the sequence. A range of emotions is expressed in the poems, from love and tenderness to longing and anger. The songs introduce more emotions and often allow the lady to speak. The example from Astrophil and Stella, included below, demonstrates the use of sonnets and songs, with their meters and rhyme schemes as discussed above. The varying emotions of the narrator can also be seen in this sample. The sonnets are written in iambic pentameter, and Sidney uses slight variations on the typical English rhyme scheme. In sonnets 87 and 91 the narrator praises the lady’s beauty and is miserable to be apart from her, while in 89 he is irritable and moody. The song is a dialogue between the obsessive lover and the lady, who dismisses his passion (Abrams 496-97).

Sidney’s sequence, like most Elizabethan sequences and sonnets in general, are modeled on the work of Francesco Petrarch, the 14th-century Italian poet who was the first major writer of sonnets. Certain conventions were established in Petrarch’s work, notably his descriptions of women, which liken their physical features to natural elements: eyes like sun, hair like gold, and so forth. An example of this can be seen in the sonnet “She used to let her golden hair fly free,” which is included below (Caws 1086-87). Sonnet 91 in Sidney’s example reflects these conventions for describing his lady: “…amber-coloured head, / Milk hands, rose cheeks…” (497, ln.6-7). The range of emotions that the narrator feels toward his loved one is also demonstrated in the Petrarch sonnet, as he expresses adoration, obsession, and pain.

Poem description and purpose

I have reconstructed elements from the historical models in “The Poet”. The narrator praises his loved one in the first sonnet and despairs of ever gaining her attention in the second. He imitates Petrarch’s conventions and then mocks himself for having done so. Shakespeare likewise mocks these poetic conventions in his sonnet “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” (Abrams 884; below). The lady speaks in the song, using shorter and more lyrical phrases, oblivious to the poet’s obsessions. Mine is a rather condensed version of a sonnet sequence, and my intent in making it relatively short was to make it more accessible to my audience. Astrophil and Stella has 108 sonnets and eleven songs.

Works Cited

Abrams, M.H., gen. ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 5th ed. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1986.

Caws, Mary Ann, ed. The HarperCollins World Reader. Single volume ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.

Hamilton, Anne. The Seven Principles of Poetry. Boston: The Writer, Inc., 1940.

Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.