her son, rather than focusing on why God might have
chosen Mary. This mention of Mary’s choice under-
scores the reciprocal nature of the conception; God was
willing for Mary to bear Christ as a son, and she was
willing to do it. The union of the human and divine
depicted here is both mutual and gentle, as the subse-
quent images of dew and stillness, or silence, indicate.
The following three stanzas, which deal with the
Immaculate Conception itself, contain a great deal of
religious symbolism. Dew was a common medieval
symbol for the Holy Ghost, and April signifi es the
rebirth and regeneration that occur in springtime, and,
correspondingly, the new beginning for humankind
that Christ’s birth brought about. Throughout the three
stanzas, the dew falls in three different places. Just as
Christ is characterized as dew in these lines, Mary is
symbolized in turn as the grass, the fl ower, and the
spray. The grass might refer to Mary’s humility; the
fl ower was a medieval symbol for virginity, and Mary
was often associated in medieval literature with the
rose; the spray can be taken as a reference to the out-
come of the union between the human and divine. The
spray seems to refer to the rod of Jesse—a fl owering
branch symbolically representing the birth of Christ to
Mary. More than just three different representations of
Mary, these symbols are also steps in a progression:
The dew creates growth from grass to fl ower to tree.
The structure of the poem is also signifi cant. There
are fi ve stanzas in the poem, and fi ve is a number asso-
ciated strongly with Mary in medieval literature. Two
of the most important associations are her fi ve joys and
the fact that her name in Latin is Maria, which has fi ve
letters. Additionally, the rhyme scheme is noteworthy.
The fi nal words in the second and fourth HALF-LINEs of
each stanza rhyme, but in the middle three stanzas the
fi rst and third half-lines also rhyme “stylle” and
“aprille.” This repetition underscores the importance
of those terms to the poem, thereby emphasizing the
idea of the Immaculate Conception as a peaceful new
beginning.
This particular work was designed to be sung as a
CAROL, and as such it has enjoyed continued popular-
ity into the modern era. “I Sing of a Maiden” is still
often reprinted in collections of carols to be sung at
Christmas.
See also MIDDLE ENGLISH LYRICS AND BALLADS, VIRGIN
LYRICS.
FURTHER READING
Brown, Carleton, ed. Religious Lyrics of the 15th Century.
Oxford: Clarendon, 1939.
Manning, Stephen. “I Syng of a Myden.” PMLA 75 (1960):
8–12.
Kathryn C. WymerITALIAN (PETRARCHAN) SONNET Con-
sidered the traditional SONNET (14-line poem) form, the
Italian, or Petrarchan, sonnet arises from the Italian liter-
ary tradition but was popularized in the 14th century by
PETRARCH (Francesco Petrarca), thus giving rise to its dis-
tinctive name. The form usually consists of an OCTAVE
and a SESTET. The octave, or octet, presents a narrative, a
proposition, or a question, while the sestet provides the
conclusion, response, or answer. The rhyme scheme of
the octave is typically abbaabba. The sestet is generally
more fl exible, following one of three rhyme schemes:
cdecde, cdcdcd, or cdedce. Of course, some sonnets utilize
other variants.
SIR THOMAS WYATT and HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SUR-
REY are credited with introducing Italian sonnets to
England through translations of Petrarch’s works. The
adaptation into a SONNET SEQUENCE was popularized by
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY’s ASTROPHIL AND STELLA, which was
composed mostly of Italian-form sonnets.
See also ENGLISH SONNET.“I. W. TO HER UNCONSTANT LOVER”
ISABELLA WHITNEY (1567) This is the fi rst poem in
ISABELLA WHITNEY’s fi rst book of poetry, The Copy of a
Letter. As the title of this poem suggests, the speaker is
I. W., or Isabella Whitney, and she is writing a letter to
an unfaithful, or “unconstant,” lover. She begins by
telling her faithless lover that she has heard he is going
to be married, in spite of his attempts to keep the fact
secret, or “close” (l. 1). Whitney then begins to alter-
nate between speaking as a jilted woman who reminds
her lover of what he is giving up by abandoning her
and speaking as a counselor offering her former lover
advice.228 ITALIAN (PETRARCHAN) SONNET