Mary Wroth's sonnet sequence, written from the perspective of Pamphilia, tells us about the struggles and sadness of loving someone inconsistent and unreliable. However, this collection of sonnets is written more as a way to document her melancholic feelings rather than directly talk to her lover. Wroth's most known sonnet cycle is 'Pamphilia to Amphilanthus', which consists of 83 sonnets and 20 songs.
In the first lines of this sonnet we see a pattern of darkness, this directly aligning with how she may be feeling: "When night’s black mantle could most darkness prove, And sleep, death’s image, did my senses hire". The poem continues with her having a dream after she had fell asleep and in this dream she sees a chariot in which Venus, the goddess of love is inside with her son, who is shooting "adding fire to burning hearts". The son places a heart burning stronger than the rest on her chest and shoots her too. The sonnet ends with her saying she hopes that this ordeal was only a dream however she has been a lover ever since.
The contrast in imagery of darkness and love in this sonnet shows that Wroth thinks of love as a negative thing, as a source of pain and sadness, this could be because of her own experiences with love.
