Theme: Perishable Beauty
Content: A sonnet that seems to be better placed with the 1-17 series as it recounts the perishable beauty of the Young Man.
O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet
ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair,
but
fairer we
it deem
For that sweet
odour which doth in it live.
- Beauty is more than the eye can behold.
- sweetness pervades in the youth.
- The rose returns as a symbol of the youth. Here it looks fair.
- The reference to rose may be a pun on the subject's name who may have been Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's patron.
The canker blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses;
- But, beauty can also mask decay.
- sweetness is absent in this quatrain due to the canker.
- The rose here smells pleasant.
But for their virtue only is their show
They live unwooed and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves.
Sweet
roses do not so;
Of their sweet
deaths are sweetest
odours
made:
- The dye of Q2 masks the Die in Q3.
- sweetness returns with a vengeance but in the shadow of death.
- The rose here dies and turns to odours.
- The fairness of Q1 now morphs to fade, and immediately after: Die.
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall fade,
by verse distils your truth.
- sweetness is absent from the couplet but will live on in the author's verse.
- The rose will die and no sensual qualities will pervade so the verse takes over as the only remaining means of conveying the subject's beauty.
Critical text © NigelDavies.home@Virgin.net