Sonnet Is Very T Tender—The Friend Is Addressed As What’S in the Brain That Ink May Character, “Sweet Boy” (L

Sonnet Is Very T Tender—The Friend Is Addressed As What’S in the Brain That Ink May Character, “Sweet Boy” (L

108 hough this sonnet is very tender—the friend is addressed as T What’s in the brain that ink may character, “sweet boy” (l. 5) for the only time in Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit? the sequence—it is really quite What’s new to speak, what now to register, thoughtful. The exuberance and That may express my love or thy dear merit? optimism of Sonnet 107 gives way to a meditation on age and decay. Nothing, sweet boy, but yet, like prayers divine, Sonnet 108 begins with the speaker’s I must each day say o’er the very same, nagging question concerning his Counting no old thing old (thou mine, I thine), capacity for finding new expressions Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name; of his own “true spirit” (l. 2) and his So that eternal love in love’s fresh case friend’s “dear merit” (l. 4). And thus Weighs not the dust and injury of age, the speaker continues his uneasy Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place, search for “what’s new to speak” (l. But makes antiquity for aye his page, 3). Finding the first conceit of love there bred, In the second quatrain, though he Where time and outward form would show it dead. calls his praises just the same each day, he uses a religious simile, “like prayers divine” (l. 5), to describe them, and ends with the recollection of the time “when first I hallowed thy fair name.” The word hallowed gives a new sanctity to his love for his friend, and the clause as a whole echoes the Lord’s Prayer. How does this square with Sonnet 105, in which he declares that his love is not idolatry? Such a love as this might well incur the wrath of the devout. And so the eternal love returns in a fresh guise. It does not worry about dust or wrinkles or the other injuries of age. Now, instead of slighting the visions and prophecies of ancient times (as in Sonnet 106), the speaker makes antiquity his “page” (l. 12), both his servant and his book. This is a swing towards the conservative and another assertion of his mastery. Most important, his search recovers his first conception (“conceit,” l. 13) of love, which has only the appearance of being dead. 183 .

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