This Elizabethan sonnet by George Gascoigne is a tortured self-confession of one “He” who “looked not upon her.” Gascoigne effectively illustrates the speaker’s paradoxical feelings for a woman through a series of literary devices such as extended metaphors, imagery, and alliteration, developing an easily identifiable conflict between the speaker’s desire for his lover and fear of being hurt again. The first stanza introduces us to the central paradox of the poem: why does the speaker “take no delight” in ranging his eyes “about the gleams” on his lover’s beautiful face? To answer this question, the speaker employs two extended metaphors that vividly illustrate this conundrum. With the first metaphor, the speaker compares the relationship between himself and his lover to that between a mouse and a baited trap, revealing that behind the appeal of love lies danger and harm. His description of how the mouse “hath broken out of trap” further suggests that he views life without love as most desirable freedom that must be achieved through a hard battle; quite contrary to common intuition. He showers her with harsh accusations: “trap”, “trust-less bait”, “mishap”… that make …show more content…
The powerful image of fire, both visual and thermal, is prevalent throughout this stanza, and the speaker’s self-comparison to a “scorched fly” shows us how deeply the speaker has been hurt. The end rhyme of the second and fourth lines between “fire” and “desire” suggests that the two are tightly connected; this flame is a flame of desire within the speaker’s own heart. Just as the fly is attracted to the bright, burning fire and is ultimately scorched by it, the author is hurt with his own flaming desire. This metaphor is so powerful that it carries, or rather, burns, into the final couplet, where his dangerous desire is reflected in his lover’s “blazing