Sir Philip Sidney

His Works.
1.The Lady of May 1578 or 1579.
2.Astrophel and Stella.1580s
3.The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia. 1590
4. An Apology for Poetry.1583
5. The Sidney Psalms. 1599

The Oxymoron phrase “ Sweet Yoke “ from “ Leave Me O Love “

“Yoke” means: A well-known implement of husbandry, frequently used

metaphorically for subjection, a yoke is defined to be: Fitted on the neck of oxen
for the purpose of binding to them the traces by which they might draw the plow,
It was also meant as a designation of servitude and carrying the burden of a task
or mission. In ancient culture, the word yoke was a term that was used to
describe submission. So when someone was described as being yoked to
someone or something, it was communicating the idea that he or she was in
submission to that person or thing. So to be yoked to Jesus is to serve and obey
Him. Before you bristle at that idea, consider this: everyone is yoked to someone
or something.

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loosen the chains of injustice and
untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?”
(Isaiah 58:6) Jesus, if we’re willing, releases the yoke of our oppression and
encourages us to take on His yoke instead.

Quotes from poems of Sidney’s

Though Tirantes hard yoke with a heavy pressure
Wring the just shoulders: but a while it holdeth ( from Psalm 25. )
Can those black beams such burning marks engrave In my free side? or am I
born a slave,
Whose neck becomes such yoke of tyranny? ( From Sonnet 47 )

Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might

To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be;
Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light ( from Leave me O Love )

The speaker refuses "human, temporal, impermanent love in favor of eternal

love— the love for and of God. It is the most explicitly Christian, as well as the
most specifically biblical of all Sidney's sonnets". Regarding the theme, "Sidney
redefines love's 'yoke,' and shifts his speaker's allegiance from the lord of
[courtly] love to the Lord of all Love". The speaker commands the temporal,
mortal love that ends with rust: "but to dust" (l. 1) to leave him, instead, he calls
himself to follow the eternal or divine love. Sidney refers to the Bible Matthew
6:19-20: The second quatrain holds a significant metaphor of the 'yoke'. The
speaker wishes himself to put on "that sweet yoke, where lasting freedoms be" (l.
6). This image is also quoted from the Bible (Matthew, chapter 11) and the yoke is
identified by 'the light'. It also means an ;easy burden'. Also, it can be interpreted
as God's yoke which is not a mere slavery but is the real freedom.

An oxymoron is a figure of speech in which two seemingly opposing and

contradictory elements are juxtaposed. In literature, oxymora, also known as
oxymorons, often reveal a paradox.

Oxymora are often pairs of words, such as the adjective-noun combinations of a

“new classic” or a “big sip,” or a noun-verb combination such as “the silence
whistles.” Oxymora can also be found in phrases or sentences that have a
juxtaposition of contradictory concepts.