On Monsieur's Departure - Queen Elizabeth 1

This poem was interesting and stood out to me the most out of all the Queen Elizabeth's poems that we read for class. It is about her struggle with love with her husband, Francis who was the Duke of Anjou. It is a mixture of sad and happiness throughout the poem which makes it confusing to understand what exactly she was feeling and trying to express to her crowd.

"I grieve and dare not show my discontent, I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,I do, yet dare not say I ever meant, I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate."

What I understood from this first stanza of the poem, is that she is trying to hide her unhappiness by sharing both good and bad things about her marriage. It's almost as if she is trying to make her marriage seem a lot better than it actually is to try to be liked by her audience.

"Some gentler passion slide into my mind, for I am soft and made of melting snow; or be more cruel, love, and so be kind. Let me or float or sink, be high or low. Or let me live with some more sweet content, or die and so forget what love ere meant."

In this last stanza, her feelings are definitely all over the place. She starts off by saying that she is a fragile woman. But by the second line, she is already contradicting herself. It seems like she wishes that her husband is more curel and mean so that she could get over him more easily. But, by the end of the poem, she ends it by saying that if she can't be happier than she is, she would rather just die so that she doesn't have to feel the pain of being upset. Maybe she said this for a dramatic ending of her poem? Maybe she really did feel this way? I guess we won't really know the truth.