Paper 1: Sonnet comparison (4–5 pages)
General information:
Use 12-point Times font, with one-inch margins on all sides, double-spaced.
On the top of page one, put your name on the left and your professor’s name on the right (same line).
On the next line, put the title of your paper. On the line after that, begin your paper.
Number your pages—the number can go on the top or the bottom of your paper. (You do not need to
number the first page.) No list of works cited is necessary if you only quote the poems.
Assignment:
Below are several pairs (or trios) of poems that share various ideas or concerns.
1) Choose one of these groupings.
2) Analyze each poem separately, making sure to explain the basic sense and to point out important
features of the poem that contribute to its meaning and impact. (Give a close reading of each poem, but
do not mention every detail—just the details that are important to the poem’s meaning and impact.) Two
or three pages.
3) Compare the poems. Do not simply list similarities and differences: point to the ways in which the
poems, when examined together, shed some light on each other. Two pages.
4) Your essay should NOT have an introduction or conclusion. It should be all analysis. You should
quote and analyze passages often. Please write in complete sentences and paragraphs.
5) Pay as much attention to how the poems are put together as to their content.
Shakespeare sonnets can be found online at:
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/
The Donne poems, the Daniel poems, and the Drayton poems are provided after the list of pairs and trios.
• Shakespeare, Sonnets 15 and 104
• Shakespeare, Sonnets 29 and 30
• Shakespeare, Sonnets 73 and 74
• Shakespeare, Sonnets 90 and 138
• Donne, Holy Sonnet 2 (“O, my black soul”) and 3 (“This is my play’s last scene”)
• Shakespeare, Sonnet 87 and Drayton, Sonnet 61 (“Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part…”)
• Shakespeare, Sonnets 115, 116, and 117
• Daniel, Sonnet 50 (“Let others sing of knights”); Shakespeare, Sonnet 106; and Drayton, Sonnet 6
(“How many paltry, foolish, painted things”)
• Shakespeare, Sonnets 55, 81, and 107
• Choose any two (or three) sonnets by Shakespeare that make a good comparison
John Donne, Holy Sonnet 2 (sometimes numbered Holy Sonnet 4)
Oh my black Soul! Now thou art summonèd
By sickness, death’s herald, and champion;
Thou art like a pilgrim, which abroad hath done
Treason, and durst not turn to whence he is fled,
Or like a thief, which till death’s doom be read,
Wisheth himself deliverd from prison;
But damn'd and hal'd to execution,
Wisheth that sill he might be imprisionèd;
Yet grace, if thou repent, thou canst not lack;
But who shall give thee that grace to begin?
Oh make thy self with holy mourning black;
And red with blushing, as thou art with sin;
Or wash thee in Christ’s blood, which hath this might
That being red, it dyes red soules to white.
John Donne, Holy Sonnet 3 (sometimes numbered Holy Sonnet 6)
This is my play’s last scene; here heavens appoint
My pilgrimage’s last mile; and my race,
Idly, yet quickly run, hath this last pace,
My span’s last inch, my minute’s latest point;
And gluttonous death will instantly unjoint
My body and my soul, and I shall sleep a space;
But my'ever-waking part shall see that face
Whose fear already shakes my every joint.
Then, as my soul to'heaven, her first seat, takes flight,
And earth-born body in the earth shall dwell,
So fall my sins, that all may have their right,
To where they'are bred, and would press me, to hell.
Impute me righteous, thus purg'd of evil,
For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devil.
Michael Drayton, Sonnet 61
Since there’s no help, come, let us kiss and part,
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love’s latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now, if thou wouldst, when all have giv’n him over,
From death to life thou might’st him yet recover.
Michael Drayton, Sonnet 6
How many paltry, foolish, painted things,
That now in coaches trouble ev’ry street,
Shall be forgotten, whom no poet sings,
Ere they be well wrap'd in their winding sheet?
Where I to thee eternity shall give,
When nothing else remaineth of these days,
And queens hereafter shall be glad to live
Upon the alms of thy superfluous praise.
Virgins and matrons reading these my rhymes,
Shall be so much delighted with thy story,
That they shall grieve, they liv’d not in these times,
To have seen thee, their sex’s only glory:
So shalt thou fly above the vulgar throng,
Still to survive in my immortal Song.
Samuel Daniel, Sonnet 50
Let others sing of Knights and Palladines,
In agèd accents and untimely words,
Paint shadows in imaginary lines,
Which well the reach of their high wits records;
But I must sing of thee and those fair eyes
Autentique* shall my verse in time to come,
When yet th’ unborn shall say, lo where she lies,
Whose beauty made him speak that else was dumb.
These are the Arks, the Trophies, I erect,
That fortify thy name against old age,
And these thy sacred vertus must protect,
Against the darke and time’s consuming rage.
Though th’ error of my youth they shall discover,
Suffice they shew I liv’d and was thy lover.
*make real, vivid, authentic