The Renaissance

1. The difference between Spencer's and Shakespeare's rhyme schemes in the two sonnets is that Spencer carries over an end-of-the-line rhyme from the first four lines into the next four lines by having an ABAB BCBC CDCD EE rhyme scheme, while Shakespeare's uses new rhymes every four lines in his ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme. I like Spencer's rhyme scheme better because I think it flows more naturally.

2. In the first section of Shakespeare's sonnet, he's trying to decide whether or not to compare the person he's talking to to a summer's day but he decides not to since they are more lovely and temperate. Then he goes on to criticize summer saying it's not long enough and it's too hot somedays and that it will always fade away. Then in the third part (the turn) he says that the person who he's talking to's eternal summer will not fade and their beauty won't die- basically saying they're perfect. Then the final message is that as long as their are people to witness him or her, they will feel the same way.

I thought that the first three sections of Spencer's sonnet had a similar message. The narrator wonders how he could still love and desire this woman so much even though she grows colder the more he entreats her. And the colder she gets towards him, the hotter his flame of desire gets. The last section basically sums it up saying, that's the power of love in gentle mind.

3. Shakespeare's Sonnet 3
Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime:
So thou through windows of thine age shall see
Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.
But if thou live, remember'd not to be,
Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

The rhyme scheme here is ABAB CDCD DEDE DD. I think the first section is saying that the person looking into the mirror should think about having a child or else he would be doing a disservice to the world. The second section is asking what kind of woman would turn him down and also asks why he would choose not to be remembered by having a child. Then in the third section, Shakespeare comments that you are your mother's glass or window into the past, meaning that parents see themselves in their youth ("lovely April of her prime") in their kids. The message of the couplet at the end is that if you don't like being remembered, then don't have kids because then your image would die with you and not get reflected down through generations.

Spencer's Sonnet 75
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.

The rhyme scheme here is ABAB BCBC CDCD EE. The first section describes the narrator writing his love's name on the beach only to see it washed away each time by the waves and the tide. I think the message here is that you can't beat time or nature. She responds in the second section by pointing out how useless it is to try and immortalize something that is mortal since she will be wiped out by nature and time just the same. In the turn, however, he replies by saying that he'll let more worthless things die in dust, but for her he would write poetry that would make known her rare virtues to the world and immortalize her name ("and in the heavens write your glorious name.") In the final couplet, he says this is how their love will always live on (through poetry) and be renewed in another life.

Sonnett I by Manas Winfield

In crowded marketplaces
Under hot dusty skies
The suicide-bombers show their faces
And we can only ask why?
What could compel a person
To kill themself, foes, and friends
With no regard to innocent children?
I guess it makes no difference to them in the end.
So to stop a human bomb
What do you do?
Find the bombs and put them in a tomb.
Then the suicide bombers can only hate you
This is what we're trying in Iraq
It is not easy to stop an attack