write a self composed poem of 4 stanzas on hope
Answers
Answer:
1. Sir Philip Sidney, Sonnet 67 from Astrophil and Stella.
Hope, art thou true, or dost thou flatter me?
Doth Stella now begin with piteous eye
The ruins of her conquest to espy:
Will she take time, before all wracked be?
So begins this underrated sonnet, from the first substantial sonnet sequence written in English, ‘Astrophil’ (i.e. Sir Philip Sidney) hopes that ‘Stella’ (i.e. Lady Penelope Rich) might take pity on him, and return the love he bears her. Anyone who has ever been in love (and that’s pretty much everyone, right?) must have felt something along the lines of what Sir Philip Sidney describes so brilliantly here, in a poem written over 400 years ago.
Sidney strikes at the heart of what it means to entertain such hope: even as he is commanding Hope to check again for more convincing ‘arguments’ or proof of Stella’s love for him, he doesn’t really need them. He’s happy to take it on faith and nurture such hope, because it pleases him to think she likes him, after all. Even if such a reading of Stella’s behaviour is wrong, like an ‘error’ in a scholar’s reading of a literary passage, he’ll happily go along with it.
Answer:
Life feels meaningful,
When there is hope.
While falling off a cliff,
I always have a rope.