Of all the sonnets of this weekend’s reading, my favorite was sonnet 39 from Astrophil and Stella. In this sonnet, the speaker personifies sleep, complimenting it for its ability to provide a safe haven from the despair of real life, serving as “the poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release” (line 3). What I found most fascinating about this sonnet was the irony of the lines’ speaking of liberty while the speaker is actively being imprisoned by his own poetry, having to fit it into the confines of the sonnet form and meter. While some of the other sonnets in our reading speak of poetry as a source of freedom, comparing it to nature, the speaker in sonnet 39’s poetry is an active participator in his reality of confinement and hardship. In describing sleep as his only escape from the woes of real life, the speaker implies that the sonnet, which is written while he is awake and is also inherently confining, is a piece of this harsh reality. Certain aspects of the sonnet’s form also mirror the meaning of its lines. The rhythm of the sonnet’s iambic pentameter provides a lullaby-like comfort, almost like the speaker is trying to accomplish his wish and lull himself to sleep through his own poetry. However, the speaker’s desperate pleading for relief as well as his guarding of the details of his own plight until the last few lines adds commotion and suspense to the poem, counteracting the otherwise calming consistency of the meter. In this way, the speaker creates a central tension in the poem between calm and chaos, helping his audience to empathize with his struggle. The other tension of the sonnet is the fact that the speaker seems to be trying to use sleep to simultaneously escape the pain of being in love with Stella and to see her once again. He says, “With shield of proof shield me from out the prease / Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw” (lines 5-6), with the description of “darts” evoking the image of cupid’s arrows, meaning that his love for Stella is the source fo his “despair.” However, after suggesting many different offerings to sleep in exchange for its relief, the speaker says: “And if these things, as being thine by right, / Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me, / Livelier than elsewhere, Stella’s image see” (lines 12-14). This suggests that the speaker plans to see “Stella,” the source of his heartache in his dreams, meaning that, while she provides him with strife in his waking hours, she gives him sweet relief in his dreams. Perhaps his favorite part about sleep is that he can see Stella in the context in which he wants to see her.