Renaissance Poems

1. In the Shakespeare poems, to me the rhyme scheme is less complicated and so is much easer to comprehend. The main difference has to do with the linking of the rhyme sounds between the quatrains of the Spenserian sonnets (A,B,A,B-B,C,B,C-C,D,C,D). In the the Shakespeare sonnets, the quatrains do not share any rhymes. There for, in the Shakespeare sonnet there is one more rhyme sound used (7 Sounds), where as in the Spenser sonnet the total rhyme sounds is only 5.


2. In the first quatrain, the question of compairing the lady to a summer's day has to do with "climate" (temperature, wind). The second quatrain focuses the question on whether the sun is out or behind a cloud. In the both of these quatrains the lady's beauty is preferred to the summer's day. But in the third quatrain the poet claims that the lady does not change as does every summer's day. In the final quatrain this claim is explained by the idea that the poem itself will ensure the lady's immortality.


3. Sonnet 29
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, (A)

I all alone beweep my outcast state (B)

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries (A)

And look upon myself and curse my fate, (B)
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Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, (C)

Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd, (D)

Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, (C)

With what I most enjoy contented least; (D)
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Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, (E)

Haply I think on thee, and then my state, (F)

Like to the lark at break of day arising (E)

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate; (F)
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For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings (G)

That then I scorn to change my state with kings. (G)

The first quatrain, it discribes the poet's mood of discontent and lack of success or aproval with other people. The second quratrain leads out from this to express his envy of those who are more fortuante or better off than he is. Then the third quatrain the poet expresses how the thought of his friend changes his mood to one of happiness and gratitude. The final quatrain claims that the poet's love or friendship makes his life on a par with any king himself.

Sonnet 75
One day I wrote her name upon the strand, (A)

But came the waves and washed it away: (B)

Again I wrote it with a second hand, (A)

But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.(B)
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Vain man, said she, that doest in vain assay (B)

A mortal thing so to immortalize, (C)

For I myself shall like to this decay, (B)

And eek my name be wiped out likewise. (C)
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Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise (C)

To die in dust, but you shall live by fame: (D)

My verse your virtues rare shall eternize, (C)

And in the heavens write your glorious name. (D)
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Where whenas Death shall all the world subdue, (E)

Out love shall live, and later life renew. (E)


In the first quatrain, he repeatedly write his lady's name in the sand on the sea shore. Each time the tide comes and washes her name away.
In the second quatrain the lady reminds him that it is as pointless to praise her in verse as it is to hope that her name on the sand will resist the tide. In the third quatrain the poet denies her claim and argues that her beauty will live on forever in his poetry as it diserves to do. The final quatrain emphasizes that though death conquers everything else their love will live on and inspire the future.