Summary

Astrophil, the speaker, announces that he desires to express his true love for Stella through poetry. He imagines that Stella will be impressed or flattered by his words, though the feelings of love are painful for him to experience. He thinks that she might be moved to pity him if she reads his poetry, and that she will eventually come to treat him with grace and care.

He explains how he set out to describe the experience of love, which for him is a sorrowful one because his feelings are still unrequited. To help him craft his verse, he turned to the poetry of others that came before him. He had hoped that reading others' words would help him find the inspiration to write down new and interesting words of his own. However, he still felt as if he lacked the right words to...