Song from Arcadia (1580)

Sir Philip Sidney

A poet, soldier and courtier, Philip Sidney was one of the most celebrated figures of the
Elizabethan age. He was a member of a distinguished and talented family; his sister, Mary,
the Countess of Pembroke, was a patron of writers and supported her brother as he
wrote his great work, Arcadia.
Sidney left Oxford before completing his degree and travelled extensively in France,
Germany, Austria and Italy with his patron and father-in-law Sir Francis Walsingham. A
militant Protestant who fell in and out of favour with Queen Elizabeth I, Sidney was
appointed Governor of Flushing in the Netherlands and died after being wounded in the
Battle of Zutphen, fighting the Spanish.
He wrote in his hugely influential “Defence of Poesy” that “verse far exceedeth prose in
the knitting up of memory”. This is true because we still read his poetry, in works like
Astrophil and Stella, with its 108 sonnets and 11 songs.

Song from Arcadia (1580)

Sir Philip Sidney
My true-love hath my heart and I have his,
By just exchange one for the other given:
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss;
There never was a bargain better driven.
His heart in me keeps me and him in one;
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:
He loves my heart, for once it was his own;
I cherish his because in me it bides.
His heart his wound received from my sight;
My heart was wounded with his wounded heart;
For as from me on him his hurt did light,
So still, methought, in me his hurt did smart:
Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss,
My true-love hath my heart and I have his.

The speaker states that she and her lover have pledged their hearts to each other, and it’s
the best exchange or ‘bargain’ that could have been contrived. By exchanging their hearts
with each other and pledging themselves to the other, the two lovers guide each other
and make them two hearts in one. The shepherdess tells her that her lover’s heart was
‘wounded’ when he saw her, because Cupid, the Roman god of love, shot him with his
arrow and afflicted him with love for the shepherdess. When the shepherdess saw that
her love was wounded with love for her, she fell for him.
Sidney’s shepherdess is essentially saying (using the word ‘hurt’ to twist ‘heart’ slightly
out of shape) that both lovers, seeing the other afflicted with love, were themselves
afflicted: in other words, it was mutual attraction from the word go: ‘Just at the moment
he was wounded with love for me, so, it seems to me, the very wound of love that
afflicted him did then afflict me.’
The word ‘change’ in the penultimate line of the poem means both transformation (they
have been transformed, by Cupid, into lovers) and exchange (they have pledged their
hearts to one another).
‘My true love hath my heart, and I have his’ is a well-known opening line in the annals of
love poetry. It’s a fine poem, a perfect Elizabethan love lyric; and it helped to pave the
way for Sidney’s greater achievement with the sonnet.

This sonnet is a song from Sidney ‘s long pastoral romance, Arcadia. Arguably written
from the point of view of a woman, the poem deals with a perfectly requited love.
Each quatrain leads us deeper into the harmonious love the pair share. The first four lines
are bound by rhyme. The following four lines parallel each other: “His heart in me” is
echoed by “My heart in him”. Then, with the next quatrain, we are spiraled into the state
of “bliss” that is mentioned in the final couplet. We can barely discern the speaker from
his lover as “from me on him his hurt did light”. The poem suggests a state of perfect two-
in-oneness has been achieved. The shared hurt simply serves to deepen the connection.
In the concluding couplet, we read “our bliss”, implying that there is no longer any
separation between the two lovers. The repetition of the first line not only neatly seals
the poem but suggests that this love is never-ending.

"My True Love Hath My Heart" by Philip Sidney uses the literary device of metonymy.
Metonymy is when someone writes about something, but does not use its name to
describe it—instead he/she uses something associated with it.
For this poem, the metaphor I find is that the heart represents love. The metaphor is that
the heart is said it is "given" like a tangible item, when it really refers to sharing an
emotion, something intangible.
Each lover has shared his/her heart (love) with the other, and the other, in turn, has done
the same. "He loves my heart for once it was his own." So the two have shared their love
for one another. In doing so, the love has altered, become something new in combining
the two separate loves into one.
The exchange of love, represented by the heart, is shared between these two, but it's
hard to tell where one person's heart stops and the other person's heart begins. They
become like two hearts in the same chest. Heart stops and the other person's heart
begins. They become like two hearts in the same chest.
The best way for me to make sense of this is to suggest that when one gives his/her heart
to the other, they become inseparable: not physically, but metaphysically. The essence of
one joins with the essence of the other and they cannot be distinguished from each other
any longer.
The idea of oneness guarantees that each person will do all he/she can to make the other
happy, for each has a part of the other's heart, the other's love. And hurting the other
would, in fact, hurt him-/herself.

Meter
The meter of Sydney's "My True-Love Hath My Heart” classic iambic (^/) pentameter (five
feet of iambs). Line one shows the meter clearly: "My^ true' / -love^ hath' / my^ heart', /
and^ I' / have^ his'." Sydney wrote this in a very rhythmic meter; one can almost sing
along while reading it if a tune comes to mind.
It consists of 3 quatrains followed by a final closing couplet. the rhyme scheme of this
sonnet is: abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

Sound devices, used in this sonnet, are very significant; the Rhyme such as: the word" his"
rhymes with "miss ", the word "guides " rhymes with "bides " and the word "heart"
rhymes with " smart". Also the alliteration in the words: " hath" , "heart", "have","his"
and "better","bargain". Assonance ,also, can be found in many words like : "sight","light"
and "bliss", "his".

Figures of speech and imagery are not many in this poem since it's a heart-to-heart
speech. the human heart in line 1 is metaphorically represented as an article that can be
exchanged for something else; the same metaphor is represented again in line 4 when
love is represented as a deal or a commercial article. In line 9, there's a personification as
the human heart is likened to a person receives something.
In conclusion, this sonnet is an expression of the mutual love of both lovers; it's to
confirm the fact that both lovers will love each other forever. Figures of speech and words
used assures the master image of their everlasting love and loyalty to that love.