Like as a huntsman, after weary chase,
Seeing the game from him escaped away,
Sits down to rest him in some shady place,
With panting hounds, beguiled of their pray,
So, after long pursuit and vain assay,
When I all weary had the chase forsook,
The gentle deer returned the selfsame way,
Thinking to quench her thirst at the next brook.
There she, beholding me with milder look,
Sought not to fly, but fearless still did bide,
Till I in hand her yet half trembling took,
And with her own goodwill her firmly tied.
Strange thing, me seemed, to see a beast so wild
So goodly won, with her own will beguiled.
Sonnet 67 is very similar to Whoso List To Hunt, by Sir Thomas Wyatt. It's about a guy who is "hunting" a beautiful doe (the girl, who would have guessed?). This girl is impossible to catch, and Wyatt realizes that the only way he's going to get her is if she lets him. First of all, I don't really know why these Renaissance poets keep trying to be cryptic and call their lover a "doe". While does are beautiful and delicate, not all girls are like that. Perhaps Wyatt could have made his sonnet about him being in the jungle hunting for a tiger or something (you get the idea). As the sonnet ends, and the poet realizes that she's gonna have to let him catch her if he wants her, it's good to see that 500 years after Spenser wrote this sonnet, guys will still chase blindly after girls they can't get. It's happened to me, and I'm sure almost every guy out there... I guess some things never change ;)
