Sonnet 35 by Edmund Spencer

English- Spencerian

All lines follow the ten syllable pattern except line 9.

While writing this sonnet, it is easy to tell that Spenser is trying to win over a lady. This sonnet is just him spilling his emotions about her.

Quatrain 1

My hungry eyes through greedy covetize, Still to behold the object of their pain,

With no contentment can themselves suffice:

But have pine and having not complain.

Our Version: He personifies his eyes. He is using them as a symbol of his mind itself. He wants to look upon the object of his pain, which is a girl. This girl serves as the object of his pain due to the simple fact that he is not with her. He wants to look at her but when he does it doesn't make him happy and when he doesn't he complains.

Quatrain 2

For lacking it they cannot life sustain,

And having it they gaze on it the more:

In their amazement like Narcissus vain

Whose eyes him starved: so plenty makes me poor

Our Version: He can't live without this girl, and the more he thinks of her, the stronger his love for her grows. He claims that if he doesn't have her to gaze upon, life isn't worth living. He then compares his situation to the same predicament that had the mythical Greek character, Narcissus killed. Narcissus died from starvation, motivated by his obsession of staring at his own reflection, but in Spencer's case, Spencer would die from the same cause, but instead of his own reflection, his obsession would be staring at his lover.

Quatrain 3

Yet are mine eyes so filled with the store

Of that fair sight, that nothing else they brook,

But loathe the things which they did like before,

And can no more endure on them to look.

Our version: The beauty of this girl is so great, there's nothing and no one that can match the pleasure he gets from seeing her. And anything he used to like to look at, including any lady he had previously had feelings for, had become irrelevant and hideous at the sight of her. He no longer has any desire to look at anything or anyone other than her.

Final Couplet

All this world's glory seemeth vain to me,

And all their shows but shadows, having she.

Our Version: With this girl on his mind, everything in the world that is supposed to please him, fails. Nothing else in the world matters other than her. His only ambition in life is to be with her.

Theme

Sonnet 35 shows that beauty grows with observation. The more he got to know her and the more he thought of her, the more his love for her grew. In line 12 he tells that he has no passion toward any other woman, to the extreme that he can't even look at them. Because we know that Spencer wrote this poem for the woman he loved, we can infer that it wasn't just her outward beauty that motivated such strong feelings for her, but her personality served as a great cause for his feelings as well.

Sonnet 35 by

Edmund Spenser

Line 9: Yet are mine eyes so filled with the store.

Line 9 is the only line in the poem which does not follow the syllable pattern set by the rest of the poem.