Theme: Love's Constancy
Content: A difficult poem to comprehend as it potentially has radically different inspirations but apparently has a central theme of love's constancy unwavered by time and fashion.
If my dear love were but the child of state
It might
for fortune's bastard
be unfathered,
As subject to time's
love or to time's
hate,
Weeds among weeds
or flowers with
flowers gathered.
- The opening 2 lines' reference to bastard and unfathered may refer to Sir Robert Dudley (1574-1649), Earl of Warwick, who was the illegitimate son of Lady Sheffield and the Earl of Leicester who died in 1588.
- Dudley's father had an affair with Queen Elizabeth I before marrying other women. That Elizabeth could have borne Leicester's children may be being alluded to in If my dear love were but the child of state, the dear love being the author's subject: Dudley.
- Dudley is a candidate for the Young Man of the sonnets (see critique of Sonnet 122).
- Conversely, the author may be expressing his love for his country or state and that this is not accidental nor blind compliance nor sways with the times but is something that is deeply felt loyalty. His reference to the child of state being left unfathered had things turned out differently and call witness to the fools of time, Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime may refer to the Gunpowder Plot of November 4, 1605 when the two Houses of Parliament, its members, and King James I would have been blown up had Guy Fawkes and his accomplices not been discovered after a tip-off and arrested in the cellars of Parliament.
- time is omnipresent throughout this sonnet, explicitly, phonetically, and in reverse in might.
- Counterpoint between time's love and time's hate & weeds and flowers.
No, it was builded
far from accident;
It suffers not
in smiling pomp,
nor
falls
Under the blow of thralled
discontent
Whereto th' inviting time
our fashion calls.
- Two quatrains of defiance now rung out with No...not...nor...not...nor...nor.
- Counterpoint between smiling pomp and thralled discontent.
- Phonetic allusion to "hour" in our, particularly as it immediately follows time.
It fears not
policy, that heretic
Which works on leases of short-numbered hours,
But all alone stands hugely politic,
That it nor
grows
with heat nor
drowns
with showers.
- Time is not explicitly present in this quatrain but is punningly represented by the ticking of a clock in heretic and politic, as well as via hours.
- Time's hate of Q1 now morphs to the author's love's heat.
- The author emphasises that his love (subject or emotion) is independent of the state, state politics, the weather, etc. It is unwavering and constant.
- Counterpoint between grows and drowns & heat and showers.
To this I witness
call the fools of time,
Which die for goodness,
who have lived for crime.
- Mid-line rhyme of witness and goodness.
- Counterpoint between goodness and crime.
Critical text © NigelDavies.home@Virgin.net