In Sidney's first sonnet of "Astrophil and Stella," it seems the speaker is desperately searching for attention from this woman, whom we are introduced to as "She." The character Astrophil is using his poetry in sonnet form (the original "love poem") to win her over. But it's not just the fact that he is writing a poem that he expects to get her heart. He thinks that if he writes sadly enough and expresses his love to his ultimate desire, she will pity him so much as to give him a chance. The second line says "She might take some pleasure of my pain." This is referring to the pain he is expressing in his poem. Astrophil hopes she'll enjoy his work and take in the emotion with care. I also noticed that this line uses a cliche. We've all heard the words "pleasure" and "pain" put together in one form or another. I'm wondering if this is where it may have started, or if Sydney actually took it from another poet or whoever may have wrote it down first. He doesn't seem like the type who would use cliches like that. The lines and words he writes are very well put and rather witty at times.

By line five, the speaker is feeling without the right words to express his love for Stella on paper. My favorite line: "Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow" (6). This does several things for me. One, it gives an image of fall leaves in my head. Two, it further supports the fact that the speaker is completely out of ideas to write. And third, it encompasses yet another cliche. Now I'm beginning to think that he has taken these cliches on purpose because this line does not only use another one, but Sidney also is saying that he has looked at "others' leaves." Perhaps this means he is reading the poetry of other men, and used this cliche from one of them. I'm not sure, but if that is the case I think it's very clever.

The last two lines definitely help the poem fall under the categorization of an English sonnet. Since they do rhyme, they are called a couplet. These lines also take a change at the end of the sonnet, one that really sums up the main point. That is, we learn the speaker should simply be looking into his own heart for the words to write his wonderful love sonnet to the woman he pines for. It's also funny that it is his muse telling him this. Of course a muse is used for inspiration. I think it's funny that Astrophil basically gets told by his own muse where to find the inspiration he is looking for rather than just be the inpiration itself. Certainly over all it is a very well written sonnet and I enjoyed the wit and humor quite thoroughly.