In the next part of the poem, the poet lover speaks how from the eyes of the beloved she had short thousand arrows which have pierced through his heart. So the poet lover’s powers have become “weak” and his wounds are “sore.” Like a wounded enemy before a great warrior, the lover is prostrate before the beloved and is looking for her mercy. His zeal of love had been such that he has become tired of pursuing his beloved. He appeals to the beloved to end the war that she has waged against him and to accept his love. His desperation and frustration is very much evident in the sonnet where the poet-lover presents himself to be a tormented soul because he is not able to deal with his heart breaks. The lover feels that he cannot take the refusals anymore and submits to the beloved. The imagery of “warrior” is in synchrony with the feudal times when warriors are highly respected in the society and also the fact that the beloved has the masculine quality of being a resolute being who has been constant with her refusals. But the beloved is a “sweet” warrior as she carries on battling the patience of the lover who pursues her all the time and she merely carries on refusing him and his proposals. The lover calls the beloved “Sweet Warrior” – an oxymoron of a sort, as warriors are usually brave and cruel to their enemies. Edmund Spenser’s Sonnet 57 “Sweet Warrior” from Amoretti is a plea of the lover to his beloved to end the war that is going on between them as the lover cannot anymore deal with the refusals from the beloved and asks the beloved to accept him so that he can be at peace with her.
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