Theme: Youthful Infidelity
Content: An excuse for the subject to stray.
Those pretty
wrongs that liberty commits
When I am sometime absent from thy heart
Thy beauty and
thy years full
well befits,
For still temptation follows where thou art.
- This sonnet places emphasis on ea words but particularly pivots on beauty.
- The wrongs that the subject commit are beautified by being called pretty.
- The subject enjoys liberty, beauty, and youth which collectively result in him straying.
Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won;
Beauteous
thou art, therefore to be assailed;
And when a woman woos, what woman's son
Will sourly leave
her till she have prevailed?
- The woman is the wooer who leads the subject astray.
Ay me, but yet thou mightst my seat
forbear,
And chide thy beauty
and thy straying youth
Who lead
thee in their riot even there
Where thou art forced to break
a two-fold troth:
- The author excuses the subject's break-up of a marriage (or affair) by saying the subject was forced to due to his beauty and youth.
- "my seat" is ambiguous: the youth has usurped the poet's rightful place / seat as the woman's lover; the youth has taken access to the woman's seat / rear / private parts.
Hers, by thy beauty
tempting her to thee,
Thine, by thy beauty
being false to me.
- The subject's beauty is doubly responsible for the break-up.
Critical text © NigelDavies.home@Virgin.net