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Edmund Spencer

Sonnet 75 - a summary

By Katelind SkyPublished 4 years ago 5 min read
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`The theme Sidney writes about within this particular sonnet is about love like many of his other poems, as well as intertwined with the inevitable aging of time and the fading of the world. He does however change the tone compared to many other poems. He begins by expressing his despair about love and how time will always prevent him from eternally having his lover. Uniquely at the end stanza, he changes this tone to a hopeful and faith filled belief about love. His conclusion is that even though the world will end and their body along with the rest of the world will age, fade and die. Despite this, he knows that their love will live forever through their spirit. He knows this because their love is divine and so pure and true that their souls will be kept together among the heavens.

In the first line Spenser, uses imagery very well to set the tone. Poetic word choice is used with the word strand. Rather than using a word to express vastness or the immensity of the shoreline he uses a word that gives the impression of limited area. The word strand gives an impression of partial, or an element of another. This expression of the shore as only a small part of the world allows him to minimize the world in general. This is a metaphor. In other words, he is foreshadowing a tone that the physical world is limited and partial compared to the spiritual world. The appearance of this shore also sets a tone of insufficiency of this world. Though the poem has not yet expressed why he is writing her name in the sand it can be inferred that he wants to preserve her name and their love.

Within the next line he expresses that there is no way to prevent the inevitable wave from washing her name away. This is a metaphor for age and time washing away their love and their memory. He repeats this imagery inferring his deep desire to have her name sustained forever. This also infers his desire to love her forever but he cannot figure out how when the world and time work against him. In line four, he uses syntax to focus the reader on a specific emotion without leaving the key metaphor out. He said that the tyde came, “and made my paynes his pray” Due to the fact that he changed the sentence order it leaves the reader knowing his despair rather than focus on the culprit or the wave. This is due to the actual purpose of his writing. The wave is merely a metaphor of how the world and time prevents their love from being remembered and lasting forever but the true focus in this line is his sadness and despair because he feels an inevitable failure about it. Just from this first stanza it is clear that love is held at the highest respect and admiration. To him and the fact that an inevitable end is going to take their love and passion away is a bigger lose than in any other way describable. This is emphasized by the line “paynes his prey” which conveys his feeling of being victimized by time and the world but also gives a particular tone that he is begging to change it as if he were in second person.

In the next stanza he begins with the word “vayne man, sayd she” shocking the reader to direct them to an entire new tone, as well as foreshadowing his feeling of disappointing his lover, as she is the one calling him vayne. This line is to tell the reader that his attempts were in pointless and in the next line he explains why. “a mortall thing so to immortalize”, this is a paradox and he uses it to convey a vast difference between their love and the world. Love never dies, it is forever as even the bible says but the world will end. Therefore their love cannot be sustained among this material world, only within the spiritual world or heaven can their love last forever. In the next line syntax is used again to allow a better poetic flow, but this time to focus the reader on his own eventual death, thus reinforcing the previous line of inevitable physical death. He repeats is meaning in the next line to reinforce the knowledge that there is no way around death just like there is no way around the wave.

He does not leave this at a depressing thought after this next line. He openly defies this inevitability. To paraphrase, I have better things planned for us. In line ten he strengthened this with syntax. He knows that death is unavoidable but he knows their love will last forever through his writing. His love sonnets and their untimed fame reference could also be a metaphor for the love he will write for her in their afterlife in heaven together. The next couple lines are better explained through paraphrasing, ‘my talented expression’, which refers back to the belief that poets are divine in nature, if not prophets, and ‘her perfect morality and innocence’. This line is saying that his expression and her innocent, pure ways make out love immortal through their eternal spirit. He reaffirms that they will never be separated, even by death and the unavoidable death the physical world promises.

The tone given to the reader in the last two lines is seemingly opposite of the despaired imagery used in the beginning stanza. He uses specific word choice, and syntax to summarize that death and time are elements that cannot be stopped or avoided (the world will age and fade away) but in the ending line, he reassures that their love will keep them together even through death. So, even though he cannot write her fame into eternity, there love can. Throughout this poem, Sidney uses specific spelling and arranging of words to keep the reader flowing along with his story, as well as successfully changing the tone and ending it with a hopeful and romantic tone.

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