Compare and contrast Sir Philip Sidney's Sonnet 39 from Astrophil and Stella to Samuel Daniel's Sonnet 45 from Delia.

Sir Philip Sidney was one of the earliest sonneteers,
posthumous publication of his sonnets in 1591 predating Spenser's (1595), Daniel's
(1592), and Shakespeare's (1609) sonnets). He used a variety of rhyme schemes, and
Sonnet 39 is an example of this.

Sonnet 39, in iambic pentameter, has
three quatrains and an ending couplet. The structure is what came to be called the
Shakespearean, or English, sonnet form. The rhyme scheme is abab abab cdcd ee. Since the
first and second quatrains repeat, it might be argued that the form is actually
Petrarchan, with an octave abababab and a sestet cdcdee, though it differs from
Petrarch's rhyme scheme abbaabba with variations in the sestet, excluding couplets,
e.g., cdecde, etc.

There are two "turns" of thought, or voltas, within
the subject of the sonnet. The first is line 5 where the thought turns from a
supplication address to "sleep," which is personified through an apostrophe, "Come
sleep, oh sleep," to the poetic speaker's initiation of his petition to sleep: "With
shield of proof shield me from out ... / those fierce darts."  The second is line 9
where the speaker, Astrophil, offers up as sacrifice his "sweetest bed / ... / as being
[sleep's] by right."

The resolution of the sonnet, which comes in the
form of an explantion for the petition, is in the
couplet:

Move
not thy heavy Grace, thou shalt in me
Livelier than elsewhere Stella’s image
see.

The couplet reveals that
Astrophil is petitioning sleep's shield because he cannot relinquish Stella's image,
thus intimating that Stella has relinquished him. Therefore, the subject of the sonnet
is rejected love that Astrophil seeks to soothe with sleep. The implied metaphor driving
the sonnet is the comparison of sleep to a deity to whom petitions and sacrifices may be
made in return for kind blessings; Astrophil assumes that seeing Stella's image will be
as meaningful to the god of sleep as it is to him:

readability="5">

thou shalt in me
Livelier than
elsewhere Stella’s image
see.

Similarly, Samuel
Daniel's Sonnet XLV, in iambic pentameter, has three quatrains followed by an ending
couplet in the Shakespearean form. The rhyme scheme is also what came to be know as a
Shakespearean ababa cdcd efef gg. There are two voltas within the subject. As in
Sidney's, the first is line 5 where the thought turns from "Care-charmer Sleep," a
personification of sleep, to the "day" in which there is "time enough to mourn." The
second is line 9 where the thought turns from day to "dreams, the images of
day-desires."

The resolution to the problem occurs in the couplet
where the poetic speaker extends his desire for sleep to include eternal sleep from
which he never awakens:

readability="7">

Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in
vain,
And never wake to feel the day's
disdain.

The subject that has
prompted the desire expressed in the couplet is that of scorned, or rejected, love: "Let
waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn." This resolution is foreshadowed in lines 2 and
3 where Sleep is called the "Brother of Death":

readability="8">

Brother to Death, in silent darkness
born,
Relieve my
languish,

Sleep, death and
dreams are all personified. The metaphor driving the sonnet is the comparison of sleep
to death that opens the sonnet, "Brother to Death," and closes it in the couplet: "And
never wake."