FREE ESSAY ON LOVE: WORTHY MISERY

LOVE: WORTHY MISERY

Humanism is a concept that has changed since the sixteenth century. Its original meaning
was the belief in the validity of the human spirit that coincided with piety for God.
Now, humanism refers to the glorification of man over God. The passing of time has
transformed the concept of love, also. In our present society, one loves pizza or one
loves a spouse. Currently, love encompasses a vast majority of ideas and intensities. The
sonnets and poems of Surrey, Sidney, Spenser, and Wyatt deem love as a consuming passion.
To the sixteenth century poet, love is a powerful force that creates misery, but
surpasses the pain to be a worthy endeavor. 
Love is a personified superior entity which must be obeyed. In Wyatt's The Love That in
My Thought Doth Harbor, love is his master (441; ln. 12). His master controls his heart,
and endeavors to reign. Even when love cowers from shame the poet still supports him. In
Astrophil and Stella, love's decrees must be followed, since they have such power (Sidney
460; sonnet 2, ln. 4). Love can act such as wringing one's heart and giving wounds
(Surrey 452; ln. 6; Sidney 460; sonnet 2, ln. 2). 
Love possesses one's self to produce much affliction. Wyatt wrote a poem, Farewell Love,
to express his tumultuous emotions. He desired for love to leave him after years of
suffering at love's mercy (Wyatt 440). In My Lute, Awake, Wyatt addresses love as an
illness: I am past remedy (442; ln. 14). Wyatt also desires to watch his former love
suffer for the pain she inflicted on him. Surrey considers love the reason for his
discomfort in Alas! So All Things Now Do Hold Their Peace (452; ln. 11). Sidney endeavors
to ignore love, yet at the same time with a feeling skill I paint my hell (460; sonnet 2,
ln. 13-4). Love's pain produces a type of hell and a disease for those ensnared that
cannot be ignored. 
The misery love produces cannot surpass the benefit of love. Surrey considers love his
lord and writes Yet from my lord shall not my foot remove: Sweet is the death that taketh
end by love (451; ln. 13-4). Death is even pleasurable if caused from love. Sidney
addresses love by writing, I call it praise to suffer tyranny (460; ln. 11). Later in
Astrophil and Stella, Sidney says that love's effect caused anguish, but that the cause
more sweet could be (471; sonnet 87, ln. 12-3). The rule of love is still worthy of
praise, regardless of the affliction. According to Spenser's Amoretti, love is the lesson
which the Lord us taught (737; sonnet 68, ln. 14). Love would be desirous because God
uses it to teach us. 
Love painfully invaded the lives of the poets, but resulted in an eventual joy, even if
the joy was at death. Love dominated their poetry as it dominated their lives. Today, our
spouses may afflict our emotions, but love of pizza will probably never leave a deep
emotional attachment. Our society has downgraded love in our life from what was
considered the normal experience. Despite the hermeneutical transformation applied to the
concept of love, the words of the nineteenth century poet Tennyson ring true today as
they would have in the sixteenth century: 'tis better to have loved and lost, than to
have never loved at all (qtd. in Stevenson 1463). 
Bibliography
Abrams, M. H. Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th Ed. New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 1993.
Stevenson, Burton, ed. The MacMillan Book of Proverbs, Maxims, & Famous Phrases. New
York: 
MacMillan Co., 1948.