Theme: Love lives on
Content: A sonnet that seems to have an omnipotent figure as its subject in whom the author's loved ones live on so making the subject the supreme repository of love.
Thy bosom is endeared with all
hearts
Which I by lacking have supposed dead,
And there reigns love,
and all love's
loving
parts,
And all
those friends which I thought buried.
- Suggests that his friends live on in the subject (rather than having died) making the subject a giver of life.
- Images of dead and burial prevail throughout the quatrains demonstrating the author's preoccupation with the loss of loved ones who live on in an after-life in the subject. This sonnet could well have been inspired by the death of the author's son or father, fuelling feelings of devoutness.
- Predominance of all representing the totality of all things living in the subject.
- The love that resides in the subject is literally represented in abundance throughout the sonnet.
How many
a holy and obsequious
tear
Hath dear religious
love stol'n from mine eye
As interest of the dead,
which now appear
But things removed
that hidden in thee lie!
- Contrary to the previous sonnet that said the author is unused to tears, here they are many.
- Emphasis on holy and religious here may indicate that the subject is Jesus or God. Certainly, divine life-giving powers are bestowed upon the subject.
- Q1's abundant all words are literally removed from Q2.
Thou art the grave
where buried love
doth live,
Hung with the trophies of my
lovers gone,
Who all
their parts of me to
thee did give:
That due of many now is thine alone.
- Lovers here must mean "loved ones", especially relatives who have died who were biologically parts of the author and now living within the subject.
- Totality of the subject resumes with all.
Their images I loved
I view in thee,
And thou, all
they, hast all
the all of me.
- The totality of the subject is massively re-affirmed with all...all...all.
Critical text © NigelDavies.home@Virgin.net