Theme: Young Man
Content: Encouragement for the subject to have children in an analogy of the sun's life in a day.
- “In the east, when the sun rises, every person praises each new dawn by looking at it.”
- Lo was a shortened form of address used by Lords as an abridged version of Lord. The surviving personal correspondence of Wriothesley, who is a strong candidate as the addressee of these sonnets, shows that “Lo” was used between Lords Salisbury, Northumberland and Wriothesley, for example, especially as "My Lo:"
- Visual-orientated quatrain centred on eye, new-appearing sight and looks.
- The ageing of the sun, and the subject, is reinforced by several explicit and hidden references to age: homage.
- The beautiful youth represented by the sun attracts the attention of on-lookers.
And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his
middle age,
Yet mortal looks
adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage.
- “And as the sun crosses the sky in the morning resembling youth at middle age, onlookers still admire its beauty.”
- Visual orientation of the sonnet continues with looks.
- The on-lookers adore the youth in his prime.
- Emphasis on age continues with middle age and pilgrimage.
But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,
Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,
The eyes,
'fore duteous, now converted are
From his low tract,
and look another
way.
- “But in the afternoon, as the sun falls and nears the end of its day, onlookers find the sun less attractive and avert their gaze.”
- Visual orientation of the sonnet continues with eyes and look.
- With the youth having now reached the dusk of his life the on-lookers now look away.
- Emphasis on age continues with feeble age.
- Tract may be a pun on the youth's previous "attraction" now reducing to the equivalent of the sun's low tract in the sky.
So
thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon,
Unlooked
on diest unless thou get a son.
- “You are now at middle age, as the sun at noon, with your best days behind you so needing to father a son else you will die without a heir.”
- Pun on son after the sonnet’s centring on the life in a day of the “sun”.
- The subject, who has been likened to the sun (though not explicitly), is now required to provide a son to continue the cycle of life and bring in the new day.
- Visual orientation of the sonnet continues with Unlooked but in a negative sense highlighting that the subject will be unlooked on if he does not have children.
- Hidden reference to sun in the first letters of each of the final couplet's lines: SUn.
Critical text © NigelDavies.home@Virgin.net