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The full poem:

My Love is like to ice, and I to fire:
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,
But harder grows the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold,
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
And feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told,
That fire, which all things melts, should harden ice,
And ice, which is congeal’d with senseless cold,
Should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,
That it can alter all the course of kind.

Seemingly, the poet is saying something along the lines of: "the love of a gentle mind is capable of changing the laws of nature." What, then, is the semantic contribution of the word "kind"? The meaning of "kind" closest to the intended message I can think of is "one's inherent nature; character, natural disposition." Doesn't seem to fit exactly. Can someone clarify the meaning?

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kind refers to "nature's operations, nature's laws in action"; per the OED definition that Barmar cited: "activity that is found in the natural world as part of the normal or natural course of events." There the natural world refers to everything.

There were natural laws, laws such as "heat melts ice", and "temperatures as low as that of ice won't cause things to catch fire".

But in their case, love has the miraculous power -- power contrary to the normal laws of Nature -- such that her icy heart ignites his passion.

Love "alters the course of kind", that is, changes how the laws of nature themselves operate.

It is not "the love of a gentle mind" but the effect of love upon a gentle mind when love enters that mind or takes hold of it.

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Spenser lived in the 16th century, and the OED has a number of now obsolete senses of "kind" from that time that may be applicable. For instance:

I.1.c The natural disposition, character, or temperament of a person or animal; innate character; nature.

and

I.6.a Action or behaviour that is natural, habitual, or customary to a person or animal; activity that is found in the natural world as part of the normal or natural course of events.

However, these sense are normally used with reference to the person being decribed, e.g. "his/her kind". I'm not sure if they would normally be used on their as in the poem, but that could be attributed to poetic license.

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  • Would it make sense to assume that the non-peotic form would be "That it can alter the course of all kind"? Commented yesterday
  • I don't think so. "all" seems to be intended to modify "course", to mean that if affects all the different courses of whatever "kind" refers to. Commented yesterday
  • A somewhat parallel use in All's Well That Ends Well: "Your cuckoo sings by kind." (Though also constrained by rhyme and scansion, and previous lines hint that it may be quoting a proverb, and is in the middle of a stream of jester-wordplay.) Commented yesterday
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    @AndyBonner In "cuckoo sings by kind", "kind" means "gender, sex", as it does in Spenser's sonnet. The male cuckoo has the distinctive two-note "cuckoo" call, but the female has a longer call often described as "bubbling" or "chuckling". Commented 23 hours ago
  • @GarethRees Indeed, two of the attestations in OED are from Spenser, and one is in the "sex" sense: "What inquest Made her dissemble her disguised kind" from Faerie Queene. Commented 22 hours ago
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Pretend, if you will, it's not a sonnet and you're not restricted by rhyme and meter.

Such is the power of love in gentle mind,
That it can alter all the course of all mankind.

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  • No, I don't think that's relevant here; I think it means exactly what the OP suspects, "one's inherent nature; character, natural disposition." Commented yesterday
  • My answer is attempting to pivot from Elizabethan sonnets to modern usage. If not limited to rhyme and meter, that's how I would have written what I believe the sentiment to be. Commented yesterday

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