Theme: The Past looking at Today
Content: Considering whether there is anything original in praise-worthy verse or whether it is just a repetition of what has gone before.
If there be
nothing new,
but
that which is
Hath been
before,
how are our brains
beguiled,
Which, labouring
for
invention,
bear
amiss
The second burden
of a former child!
- This is predominantly a b and w sonnet emphasising the backward looking nature of the contents.
- before morphs to for (as in 'fore) which morphs to former.
- The author again modestly puts down his own praising of his subject as something that may just be cycling round from his predecessors.
- Poets referred to their poems as their children so the giving birth imagery including labour, miscarriage, and former children is entirely fitting.
O that record could with
a backward
look
Even of five hundred courses of the sun
Show
me your image in
some antique book
Since mind at
first in character was
done,
- This quatrain addresses the image and mind of the subject.
- There may be an allusion to the rebirth of the Phoenix from the ashes in this quatrain linking with the sonnet's argument of today's poetry merely recycling what has gone before. The Phoenix was said to die and re-emerge from the ashes every 500 years, hence, "five hundred courses of the sun".
That I might see what
the old world
could say
To this composed wonder
of your frame;
Whether we
are mended or whe'er
better
they,
Or whether
revolution be
the same.
- And this quatrain addresses the frame (or body) of the subject, i.e. all aspects of the subject are regarded as unique and unsurpassed.
O, sure I am the wits
of former days
To subjects
worse
have given admiring praise.
Critical text © NigelDavies.home@Virgin.net