Compare And Contrast Edmund Spenser And Sonnet 18

The theme of poetry is highly elaborated within Renaissance poems especially shown in Sonnet 75 by Edmund Spenser and Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare where both speakers promise to their beloveds the power writing holds to “immortalize” and “eternize” their relationship and love (Spenser 6, 11). Just like the name which continued to be washed away by each crashing wave on the sandy shores, Spenser suggests in his poem that love is also impermanent and capable of being erased. Similarly, Shakespeare also agrees that “every fair from fair sometimes decline” where love, as well as everything else, will eventually fall victim to death and decay (Shakespeare 7). However, in the final couplet of both sonnets, the speakers compare the eternalness …show more content…
Seen in both Sonnet 31 and 39 by Sir Philip Sidney, the author utilizes the division of ideas in the octave followed by the sestet while also following a certain rhyme scheme. In the octave, the speaker is seen to address a conflicting problem before referring to a solution or an answer in the sestet. In order to portray his message, Sidney thus uses the device of iambic pentameter, where each line holds 5 specific beats with stressed and unstressed syllables such as “that busy archer his sharp arrows tries” (Sonnet 31 4). Sidney 's usage of a strict meter and its beats help appeal to the ears when read aloud. This thus provides the poem with a greater sense of consistency and certainty even with the changing of ideas in the volta seen in line 9. The sound of rhyming words is also key in sonnets, however, the words “wit” and “yet” are only half rhymes in Sonnet 31 (Sonnet 31 10, 12) Purposely, Sidney does so to show his confusion about the idea of how woman “loves to be loved” but can denounce the speaker’s lack of wit simultaneously. Just as the idea does not add up, so are the supposedly rhyming words of wit and yet. Literary devices such as alliteration also draw the ear in Sidney’s Sonnet 39 where he cries out “the baiting place of wit, the balm of woe” (Sonnet 39 2) The repetition of the first consonant sound allows emphasis on the speaker’s frustration of love while the apostrophe in “Come Sleep! O Sleep” addresses sleep, an abstract idea not present in the sonnet, to underline how the speaker is desperately calling for sleep’s aid (Sonnet 39 1). All devices used such as rhyme schemes, imperfect rhymes, meters, and literary devices, thus appeal to sound through each beat of the