ABSTRACT
Images in the Delie are extremely different from - even opposed to - Du Bartas's epic comparisons. Firstly, the rigorously short form of the dizain prevents the lengthy development of a particular image like, for example, the one people saw concerning tyrannical elements. Cosmic images in love lyric are often interpreted as poetic topoi which - although they might stem from a particular world-view - do not reflect upon that world-view but rather 'use' it to consider solely a human relationship: Scevian criticism has often referred to the 'universe' of the Delie employing the word 'universe' as a metaphor for the relation between the two lovers, for their emotional or mental 'world'. The Delie points to the pain of a human love which cannot live up to ideal love, and perhaps also expresses a concern about divine love and about approaches to the divine which involve human images and the sexual.
