Theme:      Cupid
Content:    A conventional poem inspired by epigrams of the Palatine Anthology that were re-discovered in the early 17th. Century. A variation on the theme of Sonnet 154 and strikingly different from the rest of the sonnets, many of which have a personal dimension. This sonnet is perhaps an early one of Shakespeare's as an exercise in the form and is placed to end the Sonnet series on a softer tone especially as it doesn't fit well anywhere else within the series.

• A maiden steals Cupid's brand while he sleeps and douses it in a cold fountain.
• brand refers to the weapon with which Cupid brands lovers but also has phallic allusions and symbolises sensual ardour.
• The plunging of the hot brand in the cold water is also a sexual metaphor.
• love explicitly features in all of the quatrains.
• Love's fire features throughout the quatrains and the couplet.

• The cold water turns out to be no match for the heat of the brand and is itself heated into a bath of hot water capable of curing sicknesses - symbolic of love's power.

• Cupid's brand is recharged by the look of the mistress showing that the source and drive of love is the female rather than Cupid himself.
• The speaker claims he is sick and needy of love's curative powers.
• The reference to bath, particularly in the grammatical context of its use without the definite or indefinite article, strongly suggests that this is a reference to the English city of Bath.

• Conclusion that the cure for the speaker's malady is in fact the mistress's eyes not the bath.
• love is not explicitly included in the couplet but is represented by Cupid.