Sonnet Analysis: Spenser II

Today I have decided to look at another classic sonnet and see what makes it tick. This is from Edmund Spenser's Amoretti:

Fair is my love, when her fair golden hairs

With the loose wind ye waving chance to mark:

Fair, when the rose in her red cheeks appears,

Or in her eyes the fire of love does spark:

Fair, when her breast, like a rich laden bark

With precious merchandise she forth doth lay:

Fair, when that cloud of pride, which oft doth dark

Her goodly light, with smiles she drives away

But fairest she, when so she doth display

The gate with pearls and rubies richly dight,

Through which her words so wise do make their way,

To bear the message of her gentle sprite.

The rest be works of nature's wonderment,

But this the work of heart's astonishment.

Triumphs:

The anaphora is strong in this one. The repeated use of "fair" may start off as annoying to some readers, but it is powerful enough to lull that critical part of the mind and become instead simply a part of the structure, especially on repeated readings. It contributes to the sonnet's octave-sestet division, as the change from "Fair" to "But fairest" signals the poet's turn from contemplating multiple parts of his mistress in sequence to exploring one aspect in more depth. Spenser's distinctive rhyme scheme (ababbcbccdcdee) is in full flower here, and with the partial exception of "dight" (slightly archaic even in his own time), the words are common enough that they pass unnoticed except as a pleasant rhythm, which is, in my opinion, how that rhyme scheme should sound at its best, avoiding the cloying over-rhyme-y feeling it can sometimes fall into. The sudden change from one and two syllable words to the "wonderment" and "astonishment" of the final couplet is powerful as well, strengthening the importance of those two words in the imagination. This compensates for the weakness of the actual rhyme (using the -ment suffix as the only rhyming element in a multisyllabic word). 

Imperfections:

As just mentioned, the last rhyme is weak in itself; like using a rhyme on -ly, a rhyme on -ment is strongest when the penultimate syllable would be a rhyme without the suffix. This is worse in the case of -ment because it is a less common sound and therefore draws attention to itself, whereas -ly is common enough that it can pass without inspection in most cases. This is definitely a sonnet that wants to be read repeatedly, so that the awkwardness of that rhyme, the initial resistance that can be posed by such extended anaphora, and the weakness of "dight" can all recede and the poem's strong concept and rhythm can rise to the fore. It also suffers from feeling trite in a modern context--although the existence of Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 should remind us that this sort of sentiment quickly became trite in the early modern period too--and  from using metaphors that are less recognizable to modern ears (pearls and rubies for the teeth and lips). The use of "fair" outside the anaphora may also be criticized, since it adds to the potential exhaustion of that term without contributing directly to the rhetorical effect.

Sonnet Analysis: Spenser I

For all that my sonnet analyses have primarily come from my own work or the nineteenth century, the modern period and even the eighteenth-nineteenth century sonnet revival are merely reflections of the first major period of sonnet writing in English, the Renaissance, and particularly the sixteenth century. Therefore it is high time I analyze poetry from that period, and not just Shakespeare either (Shakespeare's sonnets were actually relatively late to the game). So for that reason I present a sonnet by Edmund Spenser, from his famous sequence "Amoretti."

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
Vain man, said she, that dost in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalize!
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eek my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name;
Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.

Triumphs:
The rhythms of this sonnet are admirably prepared. I would be tempted to say they ebb and flow like the tide mentioned in the sonnet, but that's probably a stretch. Suffice to say they are extremely regular, pleasingly so, and the end-stopping contributes significantly to the effect. The speech within the sonnet is well-integrated, without confusion or disruption of the meter. The conceit is also, in my humble opinion, a pretty one, particularly the way it subtly draws a distinction between the fame of a name and the fame of the verse. And I happen to love the two lines "One day I wrote her name upon the strand,/But came the waves and washed it away:" because I have a soft spot for lines that seem like they could actually have been said (remembering this is slightly archaic due to the time of composition, not due to intentional archaism).

Imperfections:
Despite what I have said about the conceit, it's a little strange that it is her name that disappears in the sand, and therefore which implicitly is a "baser thing" which will "die in dust" (although of course given the anonymity of the "her", one could argue that this is simply accurate). The final couplet is also slightly confusing: how exactly will the poem bring them back to life, as implied by the final word "renew"? Far be it from me to suggest commonplaces are superior to invention, but the commonplace (as alluded to in Spenser's "eternize") of the time was that poetry could provide perpetual life, not resurrection. It may be that I am reading too much into Spenser's line, but the implication seems to be that the "love shall live" on despite death and that will somehow "later life renew." I also find the contrast of the literal writing of the name in the sand, the literal writing of the poem, and the figurative writing in the heavens a little strange, as the third term seems to unnecessarily complicate the first two. But still, I find very little wrong with this sonnet, particularly on a technical level; my only quibbles are with the ways in which the conceit is worked out - as is indeed typical of my quibbles with Spenser.