This poem by Philip Sidney is a sonnet, so the structure
of the poem is 14 lines, and in this case, it has an Italian Sonnet structure. You can
see that the first 8 lines (the octet) are broken into 2 4-line sentences. Then the
final 6 lines (the sextet) are the last sentence of the poem. The rhyme scheme also
helps unify these sections.
In this clever poem, the
speaker (a woman) is explaining how she and her love have exchanged hearts, and that
this act has made them very happy. This poem takes the almost cliche idea of exchanging
hearts and takes it to the extreme, almost implying a literal exchange of hearts. The
octet explains how she has his heart and he has hers, and because of this exchange they
are now inextricably joined.
In the sextet she explains
they have each received a wound -- this is an allusion to Cupid, who with his arrow
shots, gives wounds, but those wounds cause love, so they are wounds that ultimately
cause bliss. The final line repeats the first line, thus reinforcing the theme of the
poem.
No comments:
Post a Comment