(The deadline to post a response is midnight, Monday, April 8, 2013)
Sonnet
30 (Fire And Ice)
My
love is like to ice, and I to fire:
how comes it then that this her cold so great
is not dissolv'd through my so hot desire,
but harder grows, the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
is not delayed by her heart frozen cold,
but that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
and feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told
that fire, which all thing melts, should harden ice:
and ice which is congealed with senseless cold,
should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the pow'r of love in gentle mind
that it can alter all the course of kind.
how comes it then that this her cold so great
is not dissolv'd through my so hot desire,
but harder grows, the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
is not delayed by her heart frozen cold,
but that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
and feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told
that fire, which all thing melts, should harden ice:
and ice which is congealed with senseless cold,
should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the pow'r of love in gentle mind
that it can alter all the course of kind.
3 comments:
I believe the theme of this poem is desire. The speaker is in love with a woman, but she does not return his love. The more his fire and passion grows, the more her coldness increases. This contradicts the laws of nature because fire usually melts ice, but in this case, the fire makes the ice harden. Throughout the poem, he is trying to get her and she is denying him. The more she refuses him, the more he desires her. This is shown in lines 2-4. It says that her coldness cannot be changed, no matter how hard he tries. All the speaker wants is for her to desire him.
I believe the theme is love. A person that loves another is not discouraged. The person only falls deeper in love. Lines 5-6 helped convey the theme to me. Although the person desired becomes even colder, the fire of desire becomes very powerful.
This poem is largely about the powerful effects of unrequited love on the person rejected. The poet illustrates the intensity of emotion created when love and desire are met with cold disinterest. Unrequited love can turn what is generally believed to be positive into a warped and harmful emotion. Although the poet relates the object of the speaker's desires as meeting his passion and heat with a matching force, hot versus cold, it is really that the object of the desire is simply not mirroring his own burning emotion. In his vulnerability, due to the immense force of desire and love, he lacks the ability to see clearly that one cannot force love on another simply by the magnitude of their own emotion.
"how comes it then that this her cold so great
is not dissolved through my so hot desire" (2-3).
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