The line ‘By sun and candlelight’ links into the idea of the love reaching far and wide, as this line is a connotation of night and day. This suggests that this woman loves her partner not only during the day but during the dark hours of the night too.
This poem contains a spiritual/religious lexical set, the words ‘grace’, ‘praise’, ‘saint’ and ‘God’ are included in this set. The poet has used this lexical set to give us the idea that this woman’s love is deep and true, that she loves her partner with not only her body but her soul too.
The line ‘If God choose, I shall but love thee better after death’ again lets us know that this is also a spiritual love.
The words ‘Grace’, ‘Right’, ‘God’, ‘Praise’ and ‘Being’ all contain capital letters, this may be to show how strongly her feelings toward religion are.
The line ‘I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise’ suggests that even when other people are losing faith, she will not lose faith in him.
Other things in the poem are parallelism in lines seven and eight which highlight the purity and freedom of the love, the fact that there are 10 syllables in each line and the listing which is the poet listing down all the reasons why she loves her partner.
On the whole this sonnet is based largely on religious ideas, it is an emotional sonnet with a theme of love.
‘Sonnet CXXX’ is written by William Shakespeare, it is a Shakespearian sonnet, which means that it contains three quatrains and one rhyming couplet.
The rhyming pattern is as follows:
A, B, A, B – Quatrain
C, D, C, D – Quatrain
E, F, E, F – Quatrain
G, G – Rhyming couplet
The tone in this poem is ordinary/undramatic; it is similar to the tone of a normal conversation.
This poem is written by a man directly to the reader, the poet is explaining of all the defaults of his mistress but still acknowledges the fact that he loves her.
In the first quatrain the poet describes the mistress’ appearance, he does this by the use of colours. ‘Currall is farre more red, than her lips red’ is an example of this.
The description of her appearance is a metaphorical device as it creates an image of the lady’s appearance; in this quatrain another metaphorical device is also used. When the poet uses the words ‘nothing like the Sunne’ he is inverting the idea of a simile, he is deliberately trying not to use a simile, as this is what most sonnets contain. The usual sonnet would say ‘My mistress eyes are like the Sunne.’
In the second quatrain the poet describes the woman’s complexion and her breath, the line ‘no such Roses see I in her cheekes’ shows this.
The third quatrain describes voice and movement, for example:
‘Musicke hath a farre more pleasing sound.’
All these three quatrains describe the mistress and as we progress through the poem we see that the poet is giving the mistress a little more praise than in the last quatrain. When we get to the third quatrain the poet contradicts himself by saying ‘I love to heare her speake, yet well I know, that Musicke hath a farre more pleasing sound.’
In this quatrain the poet begins to speak nicely of the mistress but at the end of the line turns it around, then finally in the rhyming couplet the poet speaks well of the woman.
The words ‘wiers’, ‘reekes’, and ‘treads’ are all part of a lexical set of humanity. The poet is trying to suggest that the love is something real and not some perfect, made up woman.
Another lexical set in the poem is of appearance; this set includes the words ‘eyes’, ‘lips’, ‘haires’, ‘brests’ and ‘cheekes.’ The poet is using these words to highlight the mistress’ appearance along with the lexical set of nature, which includes ‘snow’, ‘currall’, ‘sunne’ and ‘roses.’ These two lexical sets alongside each other give detailed descriptions of the mistress’ appearance.
The last two lines of the poem sum up what the poet really thinks of this woman, after all of the insults he has bestowed upon her he finally speaks of the love that he does have for her.
‘And yet by heven I thinke my love as rare,
As any she beli’d with false compare.’
The poet is trying to convey that this mistress is as precious as anything that she has been compared to, although she is none of them.
Other things in this poem are parallelism and the fact that there are 10 syllables in each line.
Evaluation
Both poems refer to love although ‘Sonnet 43: How Do I Love Thee?’ uses the word love many more times than ‘Sonnet CXXX.’
It is as if in ‘Sonnet CXXX’ that the word love is more sacred and should not be used repeatedly as this would ruin all meaning of the word.
The two poems are both sonnets and contain parallelism, rhyming patterns and refer to love.
The main difference between the poems is that one is written by a man and another by a woman, both poems were also written in different centuries.
‘Sonnet CXXX’ was written in the 16th-17th century and is therefore written in old English, whereas ‘Sonnet 43’ was written in the 19th century and was written mainly in modern English, with an exception for the word ‘thee.’
I feel that the poets being of different genders makes a difference as woman tend to be more emotional and affectionate, whereas men tend to be more malicious. This shows in the poems as the woman has written ‘Sonnet 43’ and this poem writes of perfection, beauty and devotion. A man has written ‘Sonnet CXXX’ and this poet has written of imperfection and flaws.