Sonnet 67 Edmund Spencer

For my blog I wanted to analyze the Spenserian sonnet, “Sonnet 67, Like as a huntsman” by Edmund Spencer. His sequence of sonnets was called Amoretti, which means “little cupids” or “little love poems”. The poems were addressed to Elizabeth Boyle, who later became his wife in 1594. The Spenserian sonnets that he created were very original and known as the most intricate of all the sonnet forms. The usually featured interlocking rhyme schemes that link the lines of the poem together. So “sonnet 67” begins by creating a metaphor comparing chasing his love to hunting which seems to be a very common theme for love poems of that time. It starts with “like as a huntsman after a weary chase”, which emphasizes the struggles, hardships, energy that the speaker has to put into this love chase. Using words like “weary”, “panting”, and “rest” reveal the hard work that the speaker is putting into the chase for his love. The woman is compared to a “gentle deer” which gives imagery that she is a very beautiful and elegant lady, yet she is able to escape him throughout his “long pursuit” and his chase is in “vain”. The deer seems to show dominance over the hunter because the hunter puts so much effort into the chase and comes up empty handed, and the deer “returned” on her own accounts which shows that the actions of the hunter did not really change her plans. The fact that the deer returns to the hunter alludes to the idea that if you let something go and it is meant to be then it will come back. This could show that the “huntsman” and the “deer” are meant to be together. This reveals that all though his lover is very elusive she is destined to be with him in the end. In the sestet at the end of the poem it appears that the deer is giving herself up to the huntsman. She captures his attention with her “milder look” and then she decides “not to fly” which shows that she is letting her self be captured by the “huntsman”. The dear is waiting for him to claim her so that they can be “firmly tied” which could mean together forever and allude to a possible marriage or some sort of engagement. In the couplet at the end the hunter seems to come to a conclusion about a “strange thing”, she was in control of “her own will” the entire time which kind of makes her the hunter who is in charge and running the show and makes him the hunted. So when she is captured by him in the end she “won” not him. This shows that they both had similar goals but she is elusive and multiple steps ahead at all times. We can conclude that she wanted to be captured but was simply playing with him the whole time.