"My Love is Like to Ice" Paragraph

In "My Love is Like to Ice" by Edmund Spenser, Spenser utilizes the distinctive sonnet form in order to phrase rhetorical questions about the power and confusion that love entails in order to set up the respondant couplet. In the sonnet, Spenser disscusses the troubles and hardness of love through asking rhetorcal questions. He is confused because "[his] love is like to ice, and [him] to fire"(l. 1), but "how come it then that this her cold is so great is not dssolved through [his] so hot desire"(ll. 2-3). He is confused by the fact that although he loves her and has burning desire for her, she feels nothing of that sort, but rather the opposite. He also wonders how it is that his desire for her is not lessoned by the fact that she does not share that desire with him, "but that [he] burn[s] much more in boiling sweat, and feel [his] flames augmented manifold"(ll. 7-8). He questions the idea that it is so "miraculous"(l. 9) that when she does not like him, "that fire, which is congealed with senseless cold, should kindle fire by wonderful device"(ll. 10-11). All these questions lead up to the final couplet in which he makes the realization that he believes love is the most powerful emotion that it can overcome obstacles that normally occur. He believes that "such is the power of love in gentle mind, that it can alter all the course of kind"(ll.12-13). Edmund Spenser uses the sonnet form in order to frame questions about the complications of love and finalizes the sonnet with a couplet that explains why love is so complicated.

The Kiss Paragraph

In "The Kiss" by dante Gabriel Rossetti, Rossetti includes numerous amounts of imagery and allusion within the sonnet in order to demonstrate a certain idea and fully illustrate to the reader how that idea is portrayed. In the octave, Rossetti makes an allusion to Greek mythology. "Even now my lady's lips did play... such that constant interlude as laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed"(ll. 5-7). He refers to Orpheus, a Greek musician, in order top further show the greatness of the kiss in which the author took part. During the sestet, he uses imagery to demonstrate the passion that he had for the woman in which he shared the kiss. "I was a child beneath her touch, -- a man when breast to breast we clung"(ll. 9-10). Through imagery, the author describes the feeling that he had when he was with this girl, and how he felt weak in her power because he was in such awe of the woman. Through writing extrememly descriptive, giving the reader an image of the emotion in the sonnet, and making allusions to Greek history, Rossetti shows the godliness and amazement of the kiss.

A Sonnet- #2

In "A Sonnet" by Dante Rosetti, the octave in the beginning of the sonnet explains the problem that a sonnet is like a moment in time, and at line 9, the sonnet begins to change and answer that problem faced in the octave. "A Sonnet is a moment's monument... to one dead deathless hour"(ll. 1-3). Rossetti explains that a sonnet captures a moment in time and never allows it to die. "Whether for lustrial rite or dire portent...carve it in ivory or in ebony" (ll. 4-6). He explains that whether a sonnet is for a pure ceremony or a bad omen, "let Time see its flowering crest impearled and orient" (ll. 7-8). He believes that a sonnet is beauty and as time goes on it will prove its beauty. But in line 9, the sonnet takes a turn and begins to solve the problem of never letting a sonnet die or a moment pass. "A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals the soul"(ll. 9-10). A sonnet is compared with a coin, and when you flip the coin over, "whether for tribute to the august appeals of life, or dower in Love's high retinue"(ll. 11-12). The sonnet posseses a fate that is the underworld, and must pay a coin to cross the river styx. "In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death"(l. 14). In "A Sonnet" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, his sonnet explains and puts forth a question as to the fate of a sonnet, and in the sestet, the answer is solved.

Sir Walter Raleigh Paragraph #1

In "Sir Walter Raleigh to his Son", Sir Walter Raleigh uses the English sonnet form to warn about the pit falls of growing older through the use of showing the relationship of the wood, the weed, and the wag. Sir Walter Raleigh makes it clear that these "three things there be that prosper up apace, and floursih while the grow asunder far" (ll.1-2). When the wood, the weed and the wag are apart, all is good, "but on a day, they meet all in a place, and when they meet, they one another mar"(ll.3-4). He warns "the wag"(l. 5), young people, that when these three things come together, there will be danger. He believes that "when they meet, it makes the timber rot, it frets the halter, and it chokes the child"(ll. 11-12). Sir Walter Raleigh uses this sonnet as a warning for the younger generation to stay out of trouble and "let us pray we part not with thee at this meeting day"(ll.13-14). Sir Walther Raleigh urges the young to stay out of trouble through showing the dangers of when the wood, the weed, and the wag all come together.