Write a critical analysis and summary of the sonnet "Amoretti 34" by Edmund Spenser.

A look at "Amoretti 33" helps to orient "Amoretti 34" in
the ongoing love story of Edmund for Elizabeth. Critics agree that Edmund Spenser is
chronicling his own--sometimes fruitless--pursuit of the love of Elizabeth. Bear in mind
that Edmund Spenser had been married and had two children by his first wife, so there
was a great age difference between Spenser and Elizabeth. Since she was reputed a beauty
of a noble spirit and good heart, she had suitors her own age for Spenser to complete
against for her affections.

"Amoretti 33" expresses
Spenser's grief that his unrequited (unreturned) affection for and attachment to
Elizabeth was driving him to distraction, as the saying goes. He bemoans that he is
failing Queen Elizabeth by not being able to concentrate on writing The Faerie
Queene. He says his wits are troubled by a tedious "fit" of a proud woman who
spoils his spirit. He ends by declaring he must cease his writing until he has won her
or until someone lends him another heart ("brest") to get along
with.

In "Amoretti 34" things are not much better. He
starts out with a ship at sea that cannot navigate by the stars because clouds of a
storm have blocked the sight of them, so it has gone "out of [its] course" and "doth
wander far astray." The oppositional turn at the concatenated lines 4-5 (astray-ray) is
that he turns from the metaphoric ship to himself, thus explainingit by saying that he
has also lost his way because Elizabeth's metaphoric light is covered with clouds of a
storm and so he wanders in "darknesse and dismay" with perils blasting around
him.

The oppositional turn of the second concatenated rhyme
in lines 8-9 (plast-past) is that Spenser turns from expressing despair to expressing
hope that when the storm is past Elizabeth--the "lodestar" of his
life":

will
shine again, and looke on me at last,
with louely light to cleare my cloudy
grief,

Spenser states in the
final rhyming couplet in Lines 13 and 14 that until his lodestar is out of her stormy
disquietude, he will wander full of care ("carefull") and without comfort, with a sorrow
that he keeps to himself while doing sad penance ("pensiuenesse"). Obviously, Spenser
did something to cause a great rift in whatever uneasy friendship he had with
Elizabeth--uneasy because of his love and her indifference--and he is remorseful,
repentant, lost and longing.

The structure is the
Spenserian sonnet structure of three quatrains and a rhyming couplet, all equaling 14
sonnet lines, linked with concatenation at lines 4-5 and 8-9. Concatenation is the
rhyming scheme Spenser used in most of the amoretti. The advantage to concatenation is
that (1) the quatrains can be linked by subject matter and topic and (2) the
oppositional turns that take place at the concatenated lines add emotional tension and
psychological revelation to the sonnets.

The rhyme scheme
is the Spenserian sonnet scheme of ababbcbccdcdee with concatenation at lines 4-5 and
8-9. Concatenation allows the subjects and topics to link and the rhymes to link as b is
repeated in the second quatrain and c is repeated in the third quatrain. Other sonnet
forms require separate subjects and separate rhyme schemes (abab cdcd efef
gg).