Iambicum Trimetrum

“Astrophil and Stella 106: O absent presence, Stella is not here,” by Sir Philip Sidney

Sidney was Spenser’s contemporary and literary compatriot. Like Spenser’s speaker, Sidney’s doesn’t directly address the Stella whom he misses but instead an “absent presence” (Line 1). Like Herrick, Sidney employs a rhyme scheme, abba, and the more conventional 14-line Petrarchan sonnet—the form typically used when poets sought to speak of love.

“Lovers’ Infiniteness,” by John Donne

John Donne was another of the English Renaissance’s best-known poets. Donne’s ode differs from Spenser’s in that it eschews the self-indulgence of Spenser’s narrator and employs a voice that embraces the limitations of a beloved but never of love itself, which Donne’s speaker envisions as boundless. The poem, like the Spenserian sonnet, ends each stanza in rhyming couplets—though, the second and third stanzas’ final couplets are in near-rhyme. Donne’s repetition of “all” at the end of each stanza points the reader to the irony of trying to encompass anything as boundless as love.