his spirit. He ends by declaring he must cease his writing until he has won her or until someone lends him another heart ("brest") to get along with.

In "Amoretti 34" things are not much better. He starts out with a ship at sea that cannot navigate by the stars because clouds of a storm have blocked the sight of them, so it has gone "out of [its] course" and "doth wander far astray." The oppositional turn at the concatenated lines 4-5 (astray-ray) is that he turns from the metaphoric ship to himself, thus explainingit by saying that he has also lost his way because Elizabeth's metaphoric light is covered with clouds of a storm and so he wanders in "darknesse and dismay" with perils blasting around him.

The oppositional turn of the second concatenated rhyme in lines 8-9 (plast-past) is that Spenser turns from expressing despair to expressing hope that when the storm is past Elizabeth--the "lodestar" of his life":

will shine again, and looke on me at last,
with louely light to cleare my cloudy grief,

Spenser states in the final rhyming couplet in Lines 13 and 14 that until his lodestar is out of her stormy disquietude, he will wander full of care ("carefull") and without comfort, with a sorrow that he keeps to himself while doing sad penance ("pensiuenesse"). Obviously, Spenser did something to cause a great rift in whatever uneasy friendship he had with Elizabeth--uneasy because of his love and her indifference--and he is remorseful, repentant, lost and longing.

The structure is the Spenserian sonnet structure of three quatrains and a rhyming couplet, all equaling 14 sonnet lines, linked with concatenation at lines 4-5 and 8-9. Concatenation is the rhyming scheme Spenser used in most of the amoretti. The advantage to concatenation is that (1) the quatrains can be linked by subject matter and topic and (2) the oppositional turns that take place at the concatenated lines add emotional tension and psychological revelation to the sonnets.

The rhyme scheme is the Spenserian sonnet scheme of ababbcbccdcdee with concatenation at lines 4-5 and 8-9. Concatenation allows the subjects and topics to link and the rhymes to link as b is repeated in the second quatrain and c is repeated in the third quatrain. Other sonnet forms require separate subjects and separate rhyme schemes (abab cdcd efef gg).

Edmund Spencer's Sonnet 34, one of the Amoretti group of sonnets describing the poet's courtship and eventual marriage to Elizabeth Boyle, follows the conventional Petrarchan metaphor of lost love compared to a storm-tossed, unnavigated ship. The poet's "star" whose "bright ray" had guided him in the past is now "with cloudes...overcast." His only hope in the midst of "darknesse and dismay" is that his "lodestar," the Polaris of his life will "with lovely light" shine upon him again and restore him to happiness. In the meantime, however, the poet, full of "sad pensiveness,"  must wander in misery.

The poet, undergoing a bout of depression clearly likens himself to a ship that "out of her course doth wander far astray." (4) What particularly occasioned this emotional state is difficult to determine, unless it arose as a result of the normal stresses of married life. Regardless, the poet anticipates the coming release from his woe when his wife, "the lodestar of my life, will shine again, and look on me at last." (10-11) The poet addresses his wife as "my Helice" (10). This name the Greeks gave to the constellation which turns around Polaris. It is significant that the poet does not identify the light of his life with the Pole Star. Like him, she also 'turns around' it. It may be that this metaphor is the key to the poet's self-knowledge: He has had these emotional storms before and he will have them again. Today may be "overcast" (9), but soon the clouds will lift and clear, and once again he will know the "lovely light" (12) from his dear wife. C'est la vie.

Amoretti was a sonnet cycle written in the sixteenth century by Edmund Spenser. Sonnet 67, "Like as a huntsman after weary chase," is written in the form of an English or Shakespearean sonnet, consisting of four open quatrains followed by a couplet, often with the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The lines are written in iambic pentameter, albeit with several substitutions, such as the initial trochaic substitution in the second line.

The poem is written in first person. It is an extended simile, comparing the lover to a hunter and the beloved to a doe. The poet compares the lover to a hunter pursuing a doe unsuccessfully. When the lover/ hunter sits down to rest, tired from the extended chase, the doe returns to drink at a brook.

This suggests that perhaps in love, aggressive pursuit is not the only successful technique; instead, the beloved needs to consent of her own free will, as we see in the following lines, which describe how the the doe/ beloved

Sought not to fly, but fearless still did bide:
Till I in hand her yet half-trembling took,
And with her own goodwill here firmly tied.

• The Amoretti, by Sir Edmund Spender, is a series of sequential sonnets.  "Sonnet 67" picks up where "Sonnet 66" leaves off.
• Whereas most of Petrarch's sonnets end with death or unfulfillment, Spencer's sonnets in the Amoretti end with union.
• Here, in this bestiary sonnet, love is seen as a hunt, and the hunted has her own motives and desires, as she can be beguiling during the chase and then meek and gentle during the return.
• Like many sonnets, Spencer juxtaposes attitudes about his subject, presenting her problem (the chase: playing hard to get) in the octet and offering a solution (physical or emotional union, marriage) in the sestet.
• Man and beast, love and lover, male and female play a game of courtship: both relish in the chase and then, when tired, gives in to being led meekly away, presumably to marriage or the bed and, not, using the hunting metaphor, toward death.

According to Arnold Sanders, Goucher College, Spenser’s Amoretti are mostly written in a concatenated rhyme scheme of ababbcbccdcdee. The underlined rhymes are concatenated, linking stanzas across stanza boundaries. Spenser modified the sonnet, borrowed from Petrarch, allowing the concatention to either link quatrains together logically or oppose each other logically, turning upon the "axel" of the concatenated rhyme.

In Amoretti 77, one of the concatenated rhymes may be hard for modern ears to acknowledge due to a change in pronunciation of the phonemes in the rhyme; specifically, the rhyme between ivory, roialty, ly, and by. In Middle English, which Spenser copied, the phoneme / y / at the end of a word was pronounced like the English long / i / in contemporary wipe and as is Middle English my and fry. Therefore ivory, roiatly, by and ly all end in the long / i / sound.

Amoretti 77 follows the concatenated Spenserian sonnet rhyme scheme ababbcbccdcd ee:
playne - a
yvory - b
entertayne - a
roialty - b
ly - b
price - c
by - b
entice - c
vice - c
taste - d
Paradice - c
plaste - d
spredd - f
fedd - f

This concatenation results in three couplets  instead of the Shakespearean single couplet. The word concatenate is from the Latin catena meaning chain, thus the rhymes are linked together in a chain. Spenserian sonnet rhyme scheme is different from both Petrarchan (beginning abbaabba) and Shakespearean (ababcdcdefefgg).

The form of Amoretti 77 is three quatrains, with concatentated boundaries, and a final couplet. The ideas in quatrains 1 and 2 link logically at the concatenated rhyme. There is no opposition of quatrain logic in 77. The linkage of logic is aided by enjambment at the concatenated rhymes; both roialty and entice are followed by semicolons. In contrast, the third quatrain rhyme ends with a full stop.

The first two quatrains set up the dream vision ("Was it a dream...") and describe the apples. The third defines the apples morally ("yet voyd of sinfull vice;...") and identifies their origin ("Paradice / ...Love himselfe..."), thereby underscoring the moral definition.

In the final couplet, Spenser defines his own metaphor. Elizabeth Boyle's bosom (the woman whom he later married) is the richly spread table. Spenser's thoughts (Spenser is the acknowledged speaker) are the guests at the feast--all the guests--who wish to feed upon Elizabeth's two "apples," the twin highlights of her bosom.

A paraphrase may offer the best summary:

Dream vision: Did I dream it or did I see it?
A beautiful table of pure ivory
all spread with food, fit to entertain
the greatest prince of stately royalty.
Among the foods, a silver dish in which there lies
two golden apples of very costly price
far better than the golden apples Hercules acquired from the Hesperides
or the golden apples Aphrodite gave Melanion to help him win against Atlanta, who, having seen them, picked each up in haste.
These apples are exceedingly sweet but free of any vice.
Many want the apples but all are denied the privilege of tasting.
The apples are sweet fruit of pleasure brought from Paradise;
brought by Cupid, god of love, and planted in his own garden.
Elizabeth’s bosom is the table toffering wonderful delights.
Spenser’s thoughts are the guests at the banquet, and it is he who wants to feed on the metaphoric feast and apples in the silver plate.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Edmund Spenser’s sonnet sequence known as Amoretti is that the male lover is actually successful in winning the affection of the female beloved. In many other sonnets of the Renaissance, self-absorbed males try to win the affections of reluctant females and are usually unsuccessful. The women seem to sense that the men are selfishly motivated, desiring the women mainly as sexual objects. In other words, the women seem to intuit that the men do not truly love them but instead feel mere lust for them. The men treat the women as simple objects of self-centered desire. It is not surprising, then, that the males usually do not win the women.

In Spenser’s sonnet sequence, however, true love – in the deepest senses of that term – actually does win out. By the final third of the sequence, the male lover has come to love the truly valuable aspects of his beloved: her character, her mind, her spirit, her soul. In other words, he comes to love her in a deeply Christian sense of the word “love.” This change is especially obvious in sonnet 68, in which the speaker reveals that he has his priorities right (at least from a Renaissance Christian perspective): first asks for God’s love; then he expresses love of God; then he suggests that all humans should love another as God has taught them to love; and then, finally, he expresses love for his own beloved. In other words, the poem suggests that we should first love God, then love others in a godly way, and then love one particular person as God would want us to love that person.

Precisely because the female beloved realizes that the male is now offering her true, genuine love, she gives him such love in return. In fact, because he values her fully as a beautiful human being (not merely as a woman with a beautiful body), the female beloved in this series of poems is actually allowed to speak, as we see, for example, in sonnet 75. Women rarely get to speak for themselves in other Renaissance sonnets. We also see her spiritual beauty – especially her humility – in that same poem. Meanwhile, in sonnet 79, the male speaker shows that he understands that the truly beautiful aspect of his beloved is her mind, her reason, her soul (the qualities that link her most intimately with God). For once, a male speaker in Renaissance sonnets seems to express genuine love, not mere lust. No wonder, then, that he is successful in winning the woman he has been pursuing.

"Amoretti: Sonnet 33" begins with the poet's apology for not having already finished the "Queene of Faery" (The Faerie Queene), a work that would have increased her praises.

Spenser then appeals to his best friend, Lodowick Bryskett, to agree that completing such a work as the "Queene of Faery," especially for a man with a "simple head" was more than a difficult task even if the poem were poorly written.  The acknowledgement that the work is "rudely writ" is undoubtedly Spenser's exercise of false modesty--he surely doesn't believe his work is badly written--but he may also be saying that the work is truly difficult for any one man to accomplish.

In lines 9-12, Spenser complains that how can he, with such limited intelligence, be expected to accomplish such a daunting task, especially when the task itself has "my spirite spoyle," that is, completely depressed him so that he cannot continue the work.  On one level, Spenser may be emphasizing the immense task of writing an epic poem, and on a deeper level, he may be commenting on the difficulties inherent in the act of writing anything.

The last two lines simply beg his friend to stop complaining about his tardy writing until he either gets some rest or Lodowick gives him someone to assist him in this monumental task.

This is a poem that comments upon the mortality and inherent frailty of man and how ephemeral we are. The poem begins by questioning the belief that we are strong enough in ourselves to face the rigours of life and do not need anybody else's help. The speaker comments that you are more likely to suffer a failure or defeat if you believe yourself to be removed from the possibility of suffering a failure, and then comments on the essential truth of being human and the kind of realities we have to endure:

All flesh is frayle, and all her strength unstayd,
Like a vaine bubble blowen up with ayre:

We are all subject to the power of "devouring time" and "changeful chance," from whose ravages there is "no repair." Again Spenser returns to the truth that the person who tries to put himself above all others will fall the lowest when disaster strikes. The poem ends with a warning for those that choose to "misdeem" themselves or to see themselves in a way that does not acknowledge man's frailty and weakness. Disaster is the only ending to such a stance in life.

This poem is part of the Amoretti cycle of sonnets, which Edmund Spenser wrote to record his courtship with his beloved (and eventual wife) Elizabeth Boyle. The speaker in the sonnet cycle (and perhaps Spenser himself) did not have an easy time winning the heart of his lady, however, as Sonnet 48 reveals.

Apparently, the speaker has sent his beloved a letter declaring his love for her, but it does not go over well. In fact, the lady burns the letter. The speaker, using the poetic technique of apostrophe, speaks directly to the "Innocent paper" burned by his beloved's "cruell hand." She takes her "yre," her anger, out on the poor paper that couldn't help but express the cause of its master, and she sacrificed it to the "greedy fyre" that turned it into ashes. The metaphors here are delightful.

The paper deserved better than that, the speaker continues. Burning is the punishment of heretics (and in Spenser's day, it really was; those who failed to conform to religious orthodoxy sometimes did find themselves burned at the stake), and there is nothing heretical or treasonous about what the poor, innocent paper contained. It was merely a painful plea of a grieving heart, for the speaker's beloved refuses to love him in return.

What's more, the lady does not care about the speaker's grief. He has poured forth the "anguish of his hart" to her in his letter, for she will not hear him in person. He feels like he is near death because of his sorrow and pain at her refusal. Yet he can take comfort in one thing; even though the paper is burned, his words will remain. There is power in words, and his beloved probably read the letter before she burned it. Therefore, the words have entered her mind, and they will continue to speak to her in her memory, whether she likes it or not.