Blog Post 3

Spencer communicates a cyclical rhythm of love and heartbreak through his consistent use of solely end-stopped lines, and the metaphor of Penelope weaving her tapestry. There exists but one enjambed line in the sonnet, “In which the worke that she all day did make”. The lack of any caesura, combined with the consistently end-stopped lines, bestows a constant rhythm upon the sonnet. The rhythm accelerates in each line until pausing before leaping into the subsequent line, creating a cyclical rhythm. This rhythm, when combined with the metaphor of Penelope constantly “weave(ing)” and “unreaving” her tapestry, evinces the inescapable cycle of love and heartbreak in life.

Yet, Spencer’s inconsistent rhyme scheme portrays a chaotic picture of love, a depiction directly at odds with his consistent rhythm and cyclical metaphor. His rhyme scheme, ABABBCBCCDCDEE, communicates no pattern whatsoever, endorsing a chaotic interpretation of his sonnet.

Although Spencer’s rhythmic tempo, metaphors and rhyme scheme appear to lend themselves to polarized conclusions they in fact reach a confluence pointing to the true message of the sonnet; love is irrational. The dueling rhythmic pattern and rhyming chaos create a chaotic cycle: the final words of each line serve to establish the rhythmic pattern while simultaneously creating the rhyming anarchy. But the entire concept of a disordered cycle defies rationality. Spencer further reinforces the irrationality of love in the lines, “I must begin and never bring to end:/ For with one looke she spils that long I sponne,/ And with one word my whole years work doth rend.”, through his contrasting diction. Everything begun must end yet he states, “begin and never bring to end”. His lover, “with one look” destroying everything that he took so “long” to create, an imbalanced and unfair reality that receives reinforcement in the next line, “And with one word my whole years work doth rend.” Finally, Spencer drives his point home with the final metaphor, in which after “such labour” the “Spyders web” ceases to exist due to the “least wynd” Here he shows how a love, so laboriously and carefully created, may vanish at the slightest provocation, epitomizing the fickle and truely irrational nature of love.