Owner of a Broken Heart

Sidney's poem possesses most of the characteristics of an Italian sonnet, though the rhyme patterns of its two sextets are untypical of the form.

The word "skies" is rhymed with the word "tries" in order to emphasize that Cupid, "that busy archer", also tries his arrows in the skies, where the moon rises. In other words, there seems to be no escape from love, even in the far reaches of space. The concept of the moon is underscored by the rhyme of the words "face", as in the face of the moon, and "place".

The Volta is situated between lines 8 and 9. While the two quatrains mostly express the speaker's grief and broken heart through his projection of those feelings onto the moon, only in the sextets does he directly address his resentment toward women: "Are beauties there as proud as here?"

The final lines of the sonnet are rhymes, a feature that helps isolate them from the rest of the poem. The moon is no longer mentioned. The speaker concentrates solely on his complaint against women: while society views their rejection of his (or any other's) courtship as virtue, he considers such behaviour ingrate and cruel. He is hurt.

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