Theme: Loss and Sorrow
Content: An incredibly beautiful sonnet sadly reflecting on past sorrows but culminating, as usual, in the comfort he finds in his subject.
When to the sessions
of sweet silent
thought
I summon
up remembrance
of things past,
I sigh
the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes
new wail my dear
time's waste.
- Beautiful reflection of times past and regret.
- A flood of s words (and assonance) make this one of the softest sonnets in the canon.
- A flood of assonance on woe is now introduced with woe, wail, waste.
Then can I drown
an eye unused
to flow
For precious
friends hid in
death's dateless
night,
And weep
afresh love's
long-since-cancelled woe,
And moan th' expense
of many a vanished
sight.
- Beautifully emotive quatrain missing friends who have died and sights that have now been lost.
- The author indicates he is a man not easily driven to tears.
- The past of Q1 extends to the long-since-cancelled past.
- Emphasis on woe continues with weep and woe.
Then can I grieve
at grievances
foregone,
And heavily from
woe to woe
tell o'er
The sad
account of fore-bemoaned
moan,
Which
I new pay as
if not paid before.
- Then can I opens Q3 as it did Q2.
- Feelings of sadness double up in this quatrain with grieve, grievances; woe, woe; bemoaned, moan; pay, paid.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses
are restored,
and sorrows
end.
- The author eventually finds comfort by thinking of his subject who, in just their passive state, provides the needed solace.
Critical text © NigelDavies.home@Virgin.net