Theme of non-reciprocal love in the poem "Love that doth reign and live within my thought"

 Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey was an English nobleman, politician and poet. Henry took the courtesy title of Earl of Surrey in 1524 when his father succeeded as 3rd Duke of Norfolk. He was a great poet and credited as being one of the founders of English Renaissance poetry. With Sir Thomas Wyatt ,Henry Howard  introduced into England the styles and metres of the Italian humanist poets and so laid the foundation of a great age of English poetry.

Earl of Surrey's sonnet "Love that doth reign and live within my thought" is a translation of Petrarch's sonnet  Surrey's translation uses several Petrarchan images that became fashionable in poetic representations of love. The simile of "love as a battlefield," is central to Petrarchanism. Surrey's translation puts a greater emphasis on Love as martial conqueror.

 Love is personified and made human, a character in the poem. This is used to show the conflict that love creates within the speaker. Love is the most powerful force in everyone's lives. Throughout many generations people have tried to come up with their own explanation of love, or definition of love. In the sonnet  Howard uses the imagery associated with the tradition of courtly love by mixing the semantic fields of love (love, breast, desire, grace, heart, sweet) and war (reign, captive, fought, banner, ire, death). 

In the first quatrain, the speaker declares how the personified Love has conquered and consumed his body. Now Love, quite physically, lives in the speaker's thought and breast. Love has erected a banner on the speaker's face. In the second quatrain, the female beloved objects to such open display of love on the speaker's face, and she looks angrily at the speaker and Love. In the sestet, Love retreats from the speaker's face and hides in his heart. The speaker notes that he is suffering because of Love's boldness, yet he will not leave his fallen lord, Love but, instead, is happy to die at his master's side.

One of the main things that the poem portrays is that love is powerful because it has the ability to change us on many levels. The poet writes ''And built his seat within my captive breast'', that,  Love has stucked in the poet's heart  inducing strong feelings towards his beloved and  forcing him to love her. 

It occurs in the text where the poet's feelings on love change so it is an obvious pivot point; but it does more than just tell the reader that the tone of the poem is changing-it tells the reader something about the nature of love.  The extended metaphor employed throughout the poem is the personification of love as a knight or warrior and reign seat in this context, captive, coward, lord, and banner all add to the idea that the speaker is a kind of soldier being lead by love, and though it may cause him pain and though it may bring about his death, the speaker won’t stop to love. 

Throughout the poem, Love is providing constant changes within the man in whom it reigns. On a physical level, he states that "oft in my face he doth his banner rest," stating more or less that it makes him blush. But on a deeper level, we see constant evidence of its ability to continually convert emotions back and forth. Love for the girl makes him blush. His blushing makes the girl angry. Her anger makes him turn pale. It's all very inconvenient.  

Through this poem the poet has tried to convey that love is so powerful. The definition of love varies and it is different depending on case by case. This poem examines how love chooses an individual but an individual  can't choose love. He talks about being in love with a woman who does not return his feeling. Theme of non-reciprocal love in the poem shows that love and pain go together, it is "sweet" to die for love.