Since There’s No Help is a sonnet by the English poet Michael Drayton. It was published in 1619, in the sonnet collection Idea. An early version of the collection was first published in 1594 as Idea’s Mirror. Over the years Drayton revised, rewrote, and added poems to the collection. “Since There’s No Help” appeared as Sonnet 61 in the 1619 publication, the final version of the collection. Scholars believe that the name “Idea” refers to Anne Goodere, daughter of Drayton’s patron, Sir Henry Goodere.
The sonnets in Idea chronicle a love relationship that is far from perfect or romantically idealized. In this famous sonnet, the poet speaks bitterly of a parting of ways.
Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part; Nay, I have done, you get no more of me, And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart That thus so cleanly I myself can free; Shake hands forever, cancel all our vows, And when we meet any time again, Be it not seen in either of our brows That we one jot of former love retain. Now at the last gasp of Love’s latest breath, When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies, When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death, And Innocence is closing up his eyes, Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over, From death to life thou mightst him yet recover.
Drayton wrote his sonnets at a time when the sonnet form was popular. The sonnet, a 14-line poem with a formal arrangement of rhyme and meter, originated in Italy in the 1200’s and 1300’s. But it was not until the 1500’s that English poets enthusiastically took up and adapted the form. Popular sonnets of Drayton’s time often detailed the fluctuations of romantic love. Many sonnets depicted an idealized lady as unattainable or cruelly unsympathetic to the feelings of the poet. Three outstanding poets who used the sonnet form at this time were Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, and William Shakespeare.
Drayton was strongly influenced by the poetic traditions of the Elizabethan Age (1533-1603), of which Spenser, Sidney, and Shakespeare were leading figures. Drayton uses the mode of address and the allegorical (symbolic) figures, such as “Passion” and “Faith,” that were common in Elizabethan love poetry. But at the same time, there is a modern, conversational tone to this sonnet. The language is plain, and the emotions are undisguised. It depicts a subtle shift in feeling that is a recognizable aspect of disappointed love, no matter what the era. The sonnet moves from weary resignation, to bitter “gladness,” to grudging but irresistible hope that the beloved might yet “recover” Passion from death to life.
Michael Drayton wrote in a range of poetic styles. His most ambitious work was Poly-Olbion (1612-1622), an attempt to describe all of England’s land and history in verse. Scholars also credit him with adapting literary forms from the Latin poets Horace (65-8 B.C.) and Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 18). But the sonnet “Since There’s No Help” has remained his most popular and enduring work, perhaps because of the timeless and universal nature of its portrayal of love.
For more information about Drayton, see Drayton, Michael. See also English literature (Elizabethan poetry).
