Edmund Spenser Sonnet Questions
Edmund Spenser Sonnet Questions
1-3, 5, 7 and 9
1. The writer compares himself to fire and his lover to ice in symbols of how their love reacts to each other.
2. When the writer wrote his lover's name in the sand, the waves washed it away. But when he did it the second time, the tide made his pains his prey.
3. The writer's lover thinks him writing her name in the sand is a vain attempt at trying to immortalize her. She thinks that like her name on the sand, she too will fade away due to decay; and her lover is emphasizing that.
5. The lines 13-14 represent the writer's hope that despite their love being such a struggle, it's love; and in his mind, love has the power to overcome anything, and it can alter all the principles of nature. So he seems hopeful, and he has overcome the heartache expressed in the preceding quatrains.
7. The speaker's views about the following topics are:
A beloved woman: The writer thinks of his beloved as cold as ice. He believes that her heart is frozen, and he, as fire will be able to melt her so that they can balance each other out. But he also wonders why it's so difficult to melt her using his fire, yet he still hopes it's possible.
Romantic love: The speaker believes that romantic love is so powerful that it can change the course of the world and the reality of matter.
The value of his poetry: The speaker talks about writing his lover's name in heaven, so that it's immortal; which also may be an allusion to his poetry. So he believes that by writing about her in his poetry, he is immortalizing her.
9.
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