A Sonnet

I spent part of the weekend sorting through all of the papers I've written while completing my BA degree and putting them all on a flash drive for safe keeping.

One of these papers was a sonnet analysis I did as part of my British Literature course. I chose to analyze the last sonnet in the sonnet sequence: Pamphilia to Amphilanthus. For those of you who are not English majors, this may sound obscure. And it is. The sonnet sequence is 84 sonnets and 15 song appended to a prose fiction work called The Countess of Mountgomeries Urania, published in 1621 by Lady Mary Wroth. I chose to analyze the final sonnet in the series.

The reason I'm telling you all of this is because by the time I finished the paper I was loopy and because the instructor has a sense of humor and I was feeling cheeky, I wrote a sonnet of my own. It matches the rhyme scheme and meter of the original sonnet and summarizes Lady Wroth's concept fairly nicely. So I thought I would share it with you today!


Lady Wroth wrote sonnets about virtue,
And claimed the standard to men should apply.
Pamphilia was a queen, and to her lover was true,
But her lover, with her example, would not comply.
She begged, and cajoled, and pleaded her case,
And, at first, he was not so impressed,
But she continued to love him despite his disgrace,
Until his fidelity he finally confessed.
In the end she tells Love to rest in relief,
And to enjoy this true love forever.
To be faithful to one love is not such a grief,
But a gift to be equally endeavored.
At last Pamphilia, her lover’s true honor has won,
And Amphilanthus is resigned to no more have fun. (ha!)