Theme: Painting Beauty
Content: Role-reversal for the Poet in depicting himself as a Painter in which his heart holds the picture and his body is the frame. The author becomes the "painter" of the subject's image by the fact that they are looking into each other's eyes in which they see each other's reflection.
Mine eye hath played the painter, and hath
steeled
Thy beauty's form in table of my heart.
My body is the frame wherein 'tis held,
And perspective it is best painter's art;
- Although the art of painting has been disparaged in other sonnets, here the author depicts himself as a painter, his body being the picture's frame and the image being held in his heart. This painting is, of course, not achieved through any skill but simply due to holding the subject's reflection in his eyes.
For through the painter must you see his skill
To find where your true image pictured lies,
Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,
That hath his windows glazed
with thine eyes.
- Couples himself to the subject by telling the subject that he must see the image of himself through the author, i.e. in his eyes' reflection.
- The poet's eyes are likened to the windows of a shop in which the painting of the subject hangs. The subject must look into the poet's eyes (windows) to see in to the shop and see the painting. In this way the poet can say that the subject is always in his heart because whenever the subject looks into the poet's eyes he sees his own reflection which the poet pretends to be the image he holds in his heart.
- As the poet's eyes are likened to windows they appear to be permanently glazed with the subject's image.
Now see what good turns eyes for
eyes have done:
Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for
me
Are windows to my breast, wherethrough the sun
Delights to peep, to
gaze therein on thee.
- This enforces the "speechless" theme of the previous sonnet where it is visuals that portray the love the author has for the subject.
- The glazed windows of Q2 have morphed to the gaze of the sun in Q3.
- Possible pun on for as in "four" as there are 4 eyes - the poet's and the subject's.
Yet eyes this cunning want to grace
their art:
They draw but what they see, know not the heart.
- Surprising repeat of the heart/art rhyme from Q1, but in reverse.
- The gaze of Q3 has now morphed to grace.
Compare Constable's Sonnet 9 (1592):
Thine eye the glass where I behold my heart,
Mine eye the window, through the which thine
eye
May see my heart, and there thy self espy
In bloody colours how thou painted art.
Thine eye the pyle is of a murdering dart,
Mine the sight thou tak'st thy level by
To hit my heart, and never shoots awry;
Mine eye thus helps thine eye to work my smart.
Thine eye a fire is both in heat and light,
Mine eye of tears a river doth become:
Oh that the water of mine eye had might
To quench the flames that from thine eyes do
come,
Or that the fire kindled by thine eye
The flowing streams of mine eyes could make dry.
Critical text © NigelDavies.home@Virgin.net