Theme:      When Love has gone
Content:    A proclamation that the author expects the subject may eventually reject him and that there is no cause for the author to be loved in the first place.

• Against that time starts each quatrain demonstrating the author is preoccupied with a possible future event. As this sonnet is numbered 49 (the sum of the significant climacteric 7 multiplied by itself) this phrase may be in deliberate defiance of what time may bring as climacteric numbers were thought to signify periods of great danger. utmost sum may also refer to that climacteric sum.
• Against that time is followed by the condition: if.
• Called to that audit by advised respects indicates, as in previous sonnets, that the subject will be motivated to reassess his view of the author by others, perhaps formal advisors, given the formal language used: advised respects.
• Called to that audit by advised respects may also be a further reference to the climacteric number 49.
• The subject frowns at the author.

• Against that time is followed by the expectation: when.
• The subject is likened to the sun whilst gravity keeps the author permanently separated from that sun.
• The subject now scarcely greets the author.

• Against that time is followed by the imperative: do.
• love is absent from this quatrain (although it is present in every other quatrain and the couplet) signifying that he is currently ensconced away from the subject so is already absent from love.
• Instead, love is replaced by law, a formal and cold relationship between the author and subject.

• The subject now leaves the author.
• love can not be legislated for: there is either law or love in life and in the sonnet's parts.
• the strength of laws may refer again to the climacteric signifcance of the number 49.