Iambicum Trimetrum

“To Anthea, who may Command him Anything,” by Robert Herrick

The 17th-century poet Robert Herrick penned this ode to his beloved in quatrains using an abab rhyme scheme. Herrick’s work differs from Spenser’s in that he employs rhyme and directly addresses the object of his affection, but this poem, too, is a lyric in which the speaker, like Spenser’s, ties his survival to his beloved Anthea.

“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.