Both sonnets present religious doubt between the narrator and his relationship to God. Each poet uses imagery to his advantage to create feeling of desperateness. Both language and biblical metaphors give each sonnet a personality and a voice. Milton's sonnet is a dialogue in the form of a question and answer. It is divided into an octet, which introduces the problematic situation and leads to the question, and a sestet, which offers an answer to the problem. After posing the question, the he writes that he "fondly ask[s]," attempting to minimize damage he may have caused by questioning God. Since "fondly" denotes "thoughtlessly," he indicates that voicing his doubt was an attempt to negate the effects of questioning God, thus suggesting the question is a spontaneous, emotional explosion due to internal conflict of faith and doubt.
             In the earlier part of the octet, the narrator refers to the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25.14-30). He uses this allusion to achieve several things; the first is to compare himself with the man with one Talent, indirectly signifying that he feels God is a strict master. The narrator begins to doubt God "when [he] consider[s] how [his] light is spent" because he feels that God expects too much from him. His heavily charged question, "Doth God exact day-labor, light denied," reveals his feeling that what God "exacts" is practically impossible because one needs light in order to perform day-labor.
             In conflict with this view of God as exacting is the idea in the sestet that "Who best/Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best." This different view attempts to eliminate the negative one of God by mentioning God's "mild yoke"; that all God requires is acceptance. The attempt, though, does not succeed considering the dilemma, which the narrator deals with earlier in the octet, when he states that his "one Talent which is death to hide/Lodged with [him] useless."
             ...