Sir Philip Sidney produced the major Elizabethan sonnet cycle “Astrophyl and Stella,” published posthumously in 1591. The stylistic elements of the sonnet with which he introduces this cycle – including the superposition of phrases, sensory details, images, and personification – culminates in portraying a speaker's attempt to compose a sonnet for his beloved in the style of traditional Petrarchan conceit. Underlying this image is the speaker's confusion, anger, desperation, and eventual reconciliation with their own writing process, offering a new understanding of what it means to write love poetry. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The speaker of the poem begins by quietly pronouncing his intention to convey his love through the raw but disciplined power of poetry: “To love in truth and Fain in verse my love to show” (line 1). Bound in a rigid metrical quatrain 'abab' composed of iambic hexameter, an easily readable progression awaits: "Pleasure might make her read, reading might make her know" (line 3). Within the scansion, the speaker combines anaphora in both syntax, through the rhetorical device of sentence overlap, and diction, selecting the word “could” to fit each sentence together. Not only is this simple speech a concise and memorable summary of his internal thoughts, but it reflects a deliberate choice to present those thoughts in a highly structured pattern. Thus his tone is contemplative to himself, inviting to the reader, and seductive to his idealized beloved. The overlapping phrase also establishes a template for thematic development later in the poem. Although sentence overlap ends in the fourth line, the pattern of overlap continues in the developmental interplay of images and themes. The zeugma of line seven, “Leaves of Others,” (line seven) ties together the image of leafing through academic or poetic documents and introduces more natural imagery for the next line. The “fresh and fruitful showers” ​​of line eight add alliteration and direct sensory detail to these images of nature. Finally the image modulates into a personification of Nature in line ten as the mother of Invention. As the poem's imagery evolves, its thematic focus follows suit. Tracing the verse eight metaphor of the speaker's "sunburnt brain" uncovers a similarly overlapping development in personification. Simple devices evolve over the course of the poem into a complex interplay of themes. With the second quatrain, three personifications are activated, each with a separate agency. Nature, Invention, and Study in line ten take on roles of their own, not only outside the speaker's direct control, but actually subverting the rhetorical authority he wielded in the first quatrain. Their antics place the speaker in the position of observer, attempting to learn what he can but remaining temporarily passive. The reader, who usually occupies this position, is taken aback. More ironically, these are the very abstractions that were thought to guide a poet through the writing process. Line eleven returns to the zeugmatic double meaning of “others' feet,” conveying the thematic revolution of the sonnet. At this crucial moment, the reader watches the speaker's voice falter. His simple and sure meditation reveals itself in a brooding amalgam of thoughts. Confusion and frustration replace the speaker's initial enthusiasm (line 1). Once again on the threshold of its intended destination - minds".