Theme: Sleepless Nights
Content: A continuation of recent sonnets with the author unable to sleep due to thinking about his subject, fuelled by the subject being with others. He first suggests (hopefully) that this is due to the subject keeping an eye on him but the author merely reveals his own feelings in these pleas.
Is it thy will
thy
image should
keep open
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
Dost thou desire
my
slumbers should be broken
While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?
- Q1 deals with the image of the subject and then desire disturbing the author's sleep; this is merely wishful thinking though.
- Possible pun on the author's name in thy will.
Is it thy spirit
that
thou send'st from thee
So far from home into my deeds to pry,
To find out shames and idle hours in me,
The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?
- Q2 deals with the spirit of the subject disturbing the author's sleep; again, wishful thinking and revealing the author's own jealousy.
O no; thy love,
though much, is not so great.
It is my love that
keeps mine eye awake,
Mine own true love
that
doth my rest defeat,
To play the watchman ever for thy sake.
- Now we have the truth: it is the author who is keeping himself awake with thoughts of the subject.
- This is a love quatrain (absent elsewhere in the sonnet) emphasising the emotion the author feels and that all the feelings of love come from him.
For thee watch I whilst
thou dost wake elsewhere,
From me far off, with others all too near.
- For thee watch I provides ambiguity: this phrase could be interpreted to be the author watching the subject or vice versa showing the author clinging to the hope that the subject retains some interest in him.
- The subject is clearly having an affair with others as he wakes elsewhere...with others.
- Counterpoint in the rhyme of elsewhere and near.
Critical text © NigelDavies.home@Virgin.net