In reading Richard’s Barnfield’s sonnets for class today, I was struck by his (consistent) use of the same colors, red and white, throughout his poems as well as his classical references, both of which seem to work together in several poems of almost displacing the body of the beloved for this sort of imagery. More specifically, I was struck by how Sonnet IX is reminiscent of a creation myth, in this case the creation of the beloved. In the poem, Diana “pricke her foote against a thorne” and with the stream of bloode she “formes a shape of Snow, / And blends it with this blood,” creating Ganymede. The beloved, thus, seems to exist in this poem and others almost as the product of the Gods and nature–the poem even ends with modifying the name Ganymede with “as all divine.” To me, this way of introducing the beloved seemed detached from physical characteristics of the beloved and step away from the blazon tradition we’ve seen in other poems, yet still manages to celebrate the beloved in a more spiritual manner.