Brand from the film Interstellar, it’s “the one thing we’re capable of perceiving… that transcends dimensions of time and space.” It’s something we want to shout from the mountains at the top of our lungs.

The poem is taken from Sidney’s long prose work the Arcadia, a pastoral narrative which Sidney composed in around 1580, and the speaker of the poem in Book III of the Arcadia is a shepherdess, pledging her love for her betrothed, a shepherd who rests in her lap.Ah, love… it’s a many splendored thing, indeed. Or almost: the final couplet doesn’t actually offer a new rhyme, but instead returns to the a rhyme (‘his’, ‘miss’) that began the poem, so that the opening line can also form the closing line: ‘My true love hath my heart, and I have his.’ His? Is this one of the first gay poems in the English language, addressed from one man to another? Well, no. ‘My true love hath my heart’ is a reminder that, although he is the one most closely associated with it, Shakespeare didn’t actually invent the Shakespearean sonnet: Sidney’s poem, composed before the Bard had begun writing his 154 Sonnets, rhymes the same way as a Shakespearean or English sonnet, namely ababcdcdefefgg.

My true love hath my heart, and I have his.

So still, methought, in me his hurt did smart:īoth equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss, My heart was wounded with his wounded heart įor as from me on him his hurt did light, His heart his wound received from my sight He loves my heart, for once it was his own My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides: I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss My true love hath my heart, and I have his,īy just exchange one for the other given:

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