writing prompt for love poetry week 2

In small groups during class my group concentrated on sonnet #5 from Sidney's Astrophil & Stella sonnets. I think my group came up with a lot of really great analysis about the poem. During our classtime I noticed, in particular, one portion of the sonnet that yields multiple meanings. The second quatrain reads,

"It is most true, what we call Cupid's dart/ An image is, which for ourselves we carve;/ And, fools, adore in the temple of our heart,/ Till that good god make church and churchman starve."

I think this particular quatrain is interesting. In it, Sidney describes earthly romantic love. Sidney dedicates the first four lines to a description of virtue, which he says should rule. The four lines following the description of earthly love describe heavenly love, one that should transcend earthly romantic feelings for Christians. Sidney's address of three types of love in one poem lend to the reader's ability to see multiple meanings throughout the poem's text. Here, I will concentrate only on the portion of this sonnet that speaks of Astrophil's earthly love for Stella. When the speaker points to "what we call Cupid's dart" it is easy to see that he is pointing to a distinctly human interpretation of love. He then refers to love as "an image" which is "carved" or created for oneself by oneself, or created for humanity by humanity. The speaker says that love is created, instead of that it exists outside of human control. Thus, one analysis of this passage would be that love is a social construction, and therefore is not real. The speaker affirms that although earthly love is a creation of earthly beings, it entices real feelings from people, causing us to "adore in the temple of our heart." He also asserts that submitting to this false constructed love makes fools of humanity, since, instead, they should be embracing the heavenly love that, unlike earthly love, is immortal.

A second or alternate interpretation of this passage is that the speaker is equating earthly love to a violation of the first and second commandments which are (1) Thou shalt have no other gods before me [Jesus] and (2) you shall not make for yourself an idol. In line 6 the speaker refers to love directly as a carven image. Furthermore, Christians often speak of their bodies and hearts as "temples," in which Jesus resides, and which should not be polluted by the worshipping of false idols or delighting in lust. Referencing these ideas suggest that to embrace earthly love is to deny God's true love and to instead idolize our own, temporary, created love.