Set me whereas the sun doth parch the green

Or where his beams do not dissolve the ice,

In temperate heat where he is felt and seen;

In presence prest of people, mad or wise;

Set me in high or yet in low degree,

In longest night or in the shortest day,

In clearest sky or where clouds thickest be,

In lusty youth or when my hairs are gray.

Set me in heaven, in earth, or else in hell;

In hill, or dale, or in the foaming flood;

Thrall or at large, alive whereso I dwell,

Sick or in health, in evil fame or good:

Hers will I be, and only with this thought

Content myself although my chance be nought.

Analysis:

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey changed original Petrarchan sonnet rhyme scheme and divided the sonnet into quatrains with a final couplet (typical of English Renaissance sonnets). This is the form of this poem, in which the poem is divided into three quatrains with a final rhyming couplet. The sonnet is based on the figure of speech contrast: the oxymoron. Right from the start the intelligent reader wants to know in what condition the sun can burn the green. In the first quatrain is presented speaking voice’s problem. The love for his woman is the reason of his worries. Sure enough, he wants his love were hot tempered and he desires to be loved by his beloved. Instead though all his efforts, his love personified by the rays of the sun can burn only the green and not the ice that is a metaphor for the waste of his beloved: is thus explained the meaning of the title which is also the first line and makes the reader understand that probably the sonnet should be part of a collection. The quatrains are all places where the speaking voice would be willing to go just to be with his woman, up or down, in the sky or in earth, in hell or in heaven, in the hills and valleys ... The characterization of the movement is connoted as a wandering, traveling aimlessly and points out the difficulties that the speaking voice is in coming out the labyrinth of love. 'Hers will I be' placed in the first position characterizes the poet's determination to get out of his situation. However, in the rhyming couplet the disappointments in love finds its apotheosis. Although the narrator continues to love his woman and to desire her he knows he has to give up because all hopes are in vain. Since the sonnet is a lyric form the disappointment is translated also into the rhythm and the whole sonnet acquires a tone of sad and desperate.