Theme: Rival Poet
Content: A further comparison of the suitabilities of the Rival and the author in praising the subject. Repeat of the Painting metaphors and subject's worth being a carry-on from 82 and other sonnets but this generally lacks conviction - he seems to be losing commitment to the cause.
I never saw that you did painting need,
And therefore to
your
fair no painting set.
- Effective use of a transposed internal rhyme: therefore with your fair.
I found or thought I found you did exceed
The barren tender of a poet's debt;
- Acknowledges that his patron's beauty exceeds what a poem can say.
And therefore
have
I slept in your report:
That you yourself, being extant, well might show
- Acknowledges that he has gone down in his subject's estimation.
- Effective use of the internal rhyme: therefore with in your and additional assonance via report.
How far a modern quill doth come too short,
Speaking of worth,
what worth in you doth grow.
- Return to the issue of modern poets failing to capture the subject's worth.
- Bit of a clumsy piece of repetitive alliteration in worth, what worth, perhaps deliberately contrived to illustrate the shortcomings of those with a modern quill.
This silence
for my sin you
did impute,
Which shall be most my
glory, being dumb;
- Indicates the author and subject are not on speaking terms or at least that there has been no recent communication between them.
- Literally morphs the author's SIN into the subject's SIleNce thereby establishing a behavioural and literal connection between the two.
- Correlates his subject's silence with his own dumbness.
- Transforms my sin into my glory.
For I impair not beauty,
being
mute,
When others would give life, and bring a tomb.
- Turns the author's dumbness into a virtue by making him unable to impair his subject.
- Literally morphs the subject's iMpUTE in line 9 into the author's MUTE thereby establishing another behavioural and literal connection between the two.
- Also literally morphs the subject's BEAUTY in line 11 into the author's BEing mUTE thereby establishing another behavioural and literal connection between the two.
- Acknowledges his rivals' ability to give new life to praising the subject's worth but that it is short lived being abruptly turned into a tomb.
There lives more life in one of your fair
eyes
Than both your poets
can
in praise devise.
- Explicitly identifies a single Rival in both your poets despite using plurals earlier in this sonnet and its predecessors.
- Cute link between his subject's 2 eyes and the 2 rival poets; that he of the two gives more life to his subject; as well as the subject having more virtue than the two of them can collectively praise.
- Presumably the author sees himself as the right / right (correct) / write / dexter eye and the Rival as the left / wrong / painted / sinister eye.
Critical text © NigelDavies.home@Virgin.net