It's not unusual to find love's companion is ironically misery. People "fall" in love--an action that typically ends in an abrupt end, and often pain. Cupid's piercing arrow serves as an instrument of love. Lady Mary Wroth seems able to address the pleasures of love only by identifying its pains. Pamphilia to Amphilianthus paints a unique picture of love. Love, to Wroth, seems to pull her down like an undertow. Although she wishes to resist its appeal, she is overpowered by emotions and drawn deeper into it. Indeed, in Sonnet 7, she compares the struggle of love to a shipwreck: "The more she strives, more deep in sand is presses/Till she be lost" (lines 7-8). The weakness she feels against love is heartbreaking in itself. She is not happy to be in love, but rather feels she has merely surrendered--she is simply "servile" (Sont 14, line 10).
Even when Worth can address the joys of love, she describes them as embodied in "some happy fire" (Sonnet 15, line 7). Thus, even the pleasures she can accept from love are ultimately scarring. Further, because "Desire shall quench love's flames" it can be said that Worth feels guilt from the pleasures of love (Sonnet 14, line 12). The parallels in these lines draws the conclusion that the only joys of love are lustful and earthly. To Worth, love imprisons man to satisfy only his earthly, sinful desires; it serves to blind him from "liberty" to pursuit higher truth.
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