Thou Blind Man's Mark By Sir Philip Sidney Thou blind man's mark, thou fool's self-chosen snare,Fond fancy's scum, and dregs of scattered thought ;Band of all evils, cradle of causeless care ;Thou web of will, whose end is never wrought ; Desire, desire ! I have too dearly bought,With price of mangled mind, thy worthless ware ;Too long, too long, asleep thou hast me brought,Who shouldst my mind to higher things prepare. But yet in vain thou hast my ruin sought ;In vain thou madest me to vain things aspire ;In vain thou kindlest all thy smoky fire ; For virtue hath this better lesson taught,—Within myself to seek my only hire,Desiring nought but how to kill desire." From the first line of the Thou Blind Man’s Mark, the poet establishes an interesting yet ambivalent view of desire. He speaks from personal experience in this poem of warning, explaining the dangers of seeking desire based on his experiences pursuing love.While he appreciates the enjoyment of being in love and pursuing desire, he also scorns desire as a malicious entity that preys on the minds and hearts of fools. He argues that anyone that allows themself to fall into the trap of desire is a fool, who will pay for desire’s ware with his sanity. His opinion of desire is quite interesting due to its moderately contradictory nature; his views of desire contradict each other, creating the complex point of view illustrated in the poem. The poem follows the blueprint of the Shakespearean sonnet pretty closely, using a quatrain-quatrain-quatrain-couplet stanza structure and an ABAB BABA BCCB CC rhyme scheme, which is unusual given the type of sonnet it is. The sonnet form also makes sense due to the basic situation of the poem, which quickly becomes clear. The poet establishes his poet and addressee in the first line of the poem: the addressee is “thou,” which is directly addressing desire personified, and the speaker is likely a man who has experienced the scorn of desire and warns readers against it. Desire is personified into a living entity, becoming the object of the poem. This personification of desire allows the poet to characterize desire as the sinister force he does. It also allows the metaphors used to seem more realistic and understandable when applied to desire as an entity rather than an abstract idea. Without the personification of desire, the meaning of the poem would be shallow and less clear. This initial instance of personification allows the rest of the figurative language and meaning of the poem to be illustrated excellently and for the imagery to be vivid. Several times throughout the poem, the speaker describes desire as a trap: “thou fool’s self-chosen snare” and “thou web of will.” These descriptions evoke imagery of a trap and a spider web, both of which imprison prey, much like the poet argues that desire imprisons fools and bring them madness. The spiderweb specifically evokes an image of a spider waiting to consume its prey which is trapped in its web. In this case the spider is desire and the prey is a fool who has succumbed to desire’s seduction, allowing himself to lose his mind in pursuit of love. This poem, however, describes the snare and web as self-chosen, meaning that the fool who fell into it, whether knowing the risks or not, chose his own fate of imprisonment. In the pursuit of desire, fools will pay “with price of mangled mind” for desire’s “worthless ware,” Meaning that those who pursue desire will lose their mind in search of its “worthless ware” which is likely love. The poet argues that those who fall prey to desire’s traps do it foolishly but knowingly, as if they are aware of the consequences but too foolish to preserve their own sanity rather than seek love, which, itself, is apparently worthless. Like many traditional poems, this one has a shift, which comes after line 8. Before the shift, the poet describes a variety of things, including the personification of desire and the extended metaphor of fools and traps. Before the shift, the poet talks about the effects of desire on others and the consequences of pursuing it. After the shift, however, he describes his own experiences seeking desire as vain and dangerous. He describes the vanity of desire’s “worthless ware,” as well as his ruin which desire sought to bring about. This is similar to the line regarding paying for love with one’s sanity: the poet was almost ruined by his pursuit of desire. In addition, the choice of the word “vain” is in itself quite complex. While the obvious use of the word is to reinforce the idea that the ware desire peddles is useless, which was stated in no uncertain terms earlier in the poem. However, the use of the word vain could have a second meaning: that desire itself is vain and the pursuit of love is to polish one’s image, which contributes to the foolishness of falling into desire’s trap. Not only is love worthless, but it also exists only to improve a person’s image. This sudden switch to anecdotal evidence gives the argument of the poem credibility. The poet probably pursued love himself and was scorned only to later cope with this by arguing that love is worthless and costs one’s sanity, in order to come to terms with the fact that he was unable to achieve it. After the shift, he abandons “objective” logical argument in favor of anecdotal evidence, which makes his opinions credible and believable. The poem’s base structure contributes to the complexity of the poet’s view of desire. The poem is written as a Shakespearean sonnet, with a quatrain-quatrain-quatrain-couplet structure. It has some variation from the traditional shakespearean sonnet, but the goal of using the sonnet structure is clear. The fact that the poem is a sonnet is ironic because of the poem’s meaning. Sonnets are usually written as love poems for a specific individual that the poet has intense feelings for. However, this poem has quite the opposite meaning: the poet is scorning desire as a malicious creature and the ware it offers, which is love, as useless. This is of course ironic because the meaning of the poem completely contradicts the expectations of someone reading a sonnet, because a poem that seems to be meant to illustrate the poet’s love for someone is instead being used to illustrate his disdain for love in general. In addition, the addressee of the poem is ironic for its structure. The poem is addressed directly to desire, which itself is an example of an apostrophe because it directly addresses an abstract idea. Instead of addressing the object of the poet’s desire, the poem addresses desire itself. Instead of conveying the love the poet has for the addressee, this poem conveys the deep resentment he feels toward the idea of love because of his experiences. Again, he uses the sonnet to warn others about the sinister nature of desire because he himself has likely experienced scorn from a lover, which made him think that desire as a whole was a flawed concept. The message of this poem, and, by extension, the poet’s ambivalent opinion of desire, is incredibly complicated. He has two conflicting views of desire that combine to form this complex opinion. On one hand, he understands the allure of desire and how it may seduce people into pursuing it. On the other hand, he scorns desire and argues that the love it offers is worthless, as it is both vain and costs one’s sanity. Simultaneously, he believes that those who pursue desire are fools for knowingly allowing themselves to be ruined by desire. The poet personifies love as a predator, which traps fools and feasts on their sanity, despite the aforementioned fools knowingly allowing themselves to fall into these traps. Despite his opinion of desire, the poet’s hatred likely stems from personal experience, meaning that he scorns desire so much because he himself was once scorned by it.