Sidenote for Samuel Daniel's Delia

I was just reading through all of the ruminations posted for this week and I noticed that only one person decided to ruminate about Samuel Daniel's Delia, and she only discussed sonnet #45(Still an excellent rumination Natalie!) I was really hoping more people were going to write about this poem because I was so incredibly intrigued by it, but kept feeling like I was not fully grasping the exactly what was trying to be said. Well anyway, since my uncertainty was not cleared up through one of your analyses I decided to research the meaning and interpretation of these particular sonnets online. I found this website that features an essay that seems to have been published by Berkley, however I cannot be certain of that. This is a well crafted, and seemingly well researched, explanation of several sonnets from Daniel's Delia. It really helped me better understand where the speaker was coming from, and what exactly he was trying to say. I hope you guys enjoy it!


"Frequently the Elizabethans went straight to Petrarch's own poems, and while subsequent imitations may have had some effect, the original idea was nevertheless often of chief importance to them. Such was undoubtedly the case with Daniel.

He uses the themes of the master over and again-praising his lady's charms, lamenting her cruelty, feeling his own unworthiness to sing her beauty, yet stressing the power of the poet to eternize her perfections of mind and body, looking forward to the day when age shall have faded that beauty and when her heart may soften to his pleading--such are some of the subjects which Petrarch's followers of the sixteenth century, and Daniel especially, found worthy of poetic treatment. His sweet tenderness flows so softly through the sonnets that it is difficult to refrain from calling attention to the poems which give it happiest expression. No wonder Shakespeare read them again and again, and, like a bee, sucked their honey. Sonnets 33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 45, and 46 deal gently, understandingly with the Petrarchan fancy of the loved one grown old and faded. There is not even a hint of Wyatt's natural and stern resentment against the once unrelenting mistress; with Daniel all is loyal, faithful affection, for

I that have loved thee thus before thou fadest,
My faith shall wax, when thou art in thy waning.

And so, since he was not creative by nature, or born a master of passion, Daniel gathered unto himself the ideas of others, and quietly, gently, slowly, with the ease of infinite labor, wrought them into his own thought and feeling. His sonnets are ever placid and smooth, and in his thought are shown the sweet, familiar graces of human relationships, charming the soul and lulling it into gentle repose. There is no sharp cry of protest, no appeal to the turbulent depths of the heart."


http://freessays.0catch.com/danielpearson.html   This is the website if you are interested in reading more about Daniel, and the rest of Delia.