“Sonnet 35” from Pamphilia to Amphilanthus by Lady Mary Wroth, 1621; p 685

 

This Petrarchan sonnet was published as part of Urania in 1621 and was joined by 82 additional sonnets and 20 songs within this publication. I chose this piece as it is written from the female perspective and discusses the danger of false hope, something we can all relate to today. In this particular example, the speaker suffers a miscarriage: false hope of life. Miscarriages are extremely emotionally and physically draining on a mother and is one of those negative experiences that sets apart female and male life stories. It is a failure of one’s body to do what—at the time especially—females were assumed to do in a relationship. Imagine the heartbreak! Even if we ourselves never experience the trauma of a miscarriage—and let us pray we do not—this message of false hope is something we can all relate to in every ambition, relationship, and task we undergo. I especially enjoy the final lines which describe hope as an emotional peak, leaving nothing for our reality to do but slide:

      “False hope, which feeds but to destroy, and spill

What it first breeds, unnatural to the birth

Of thine own womb; conceiving but to kill,

And plenty gives to make the greater dearth,

So Tyrants do who falsely ruling earth

Outwardly grace them, and with profits fill

Advance those who appointed are to death

To make their greater fall to please their will.

Thus shadow they their wicked vile intent

Colouring evil with a show of good

While in fair shows their malice so is spent;

Hope kills the heart, and Tyrants shed the blood.

For hope deluding brings us to the pride

Of our desires the farther down to slide.”