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SONNET 33 |
PARAPHRASE |
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Full many a glorious morning
have I seen |
Many times I have seen a glorious morning |
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Flatter the mountain-tops
with sovereign eye*, |
Light up the mountain tops, |
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Kissing with golden face the
meadows green, |
Bathe the green meadows in golden rays of sunshine, |
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Gilding pale streams with
heavenly alchemy; |
Color the streams with its heavenly magic; |
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Anon permit the basest
clouds to ride |
And then [the morning] allows the darkest clouds to ride |
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With ugly rack* on his
celestial face, |
In a mass across the sun's face, |
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And from the forlorn world
his visage hide, |
And from this sorrowful world the sun hides, |
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Stealing unseen to west with
this disgrace*: |
Fleeing to the west unseen while the sky remains overcast; |
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Even so my sun one early
morn did shine |
Like this, my own sun one morning did shine |
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With all triumphant splendor
on my brow; |
With glorious splendour on my face; |
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But out, alack! he was but
one hour mine; |
But, alas, my sun was mine for only an hour; |
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The region cloud hath mask'd
him from me now. |
The concealing clouds have masked him from me now. |
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Yet him for this my love no
whit disdaineth; |
Yet love thinks no less of him for this; |
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Suns of the world may stain
when heaven's sun staineth. |
If the sun in heaven can be overcast, so can the suns in the world
below. |
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ANALYSIS [Line 2]* The sun here is
compared to a king or queen - a monarch's eye is said to "flatter
whatever it rests upon" (Dover Wilson, Works of Shakespeare, Between the time
Shakespeare wrote Sonnet 32 and 33, the poet's entire attitude toward his
relationship with his young friend had changed. While he had been focused on
his own mortality throughout Sonnets 27-32, now the poet has a new and more
pressing dilemma to jar him from his previous obsession. In Sonnets 33-35 the
poet makes it clear that he has been deeply hurt by his young friend, who
many believe to be the historical Earl of
Southampton,
Shakespeare's patron. We cannot say what specific wrong-doing prompted such
displeasure, although we can assume that the young man had many interests
other than the poet, and he may have surrounded himself with other friends
(and possibly other lovers), leaving the poet feeling isolated and unwanted. The
poet's dislike of his friend's actions are clear from the overall reading,
but also from his choice of words: "ugly", "disgrace",
"basest", "disdaineth", and "staineth". Moreover,
the sun permits the clouds to cover his face as he cowers off to the west,
and the direct comparison is made between the sun and the poet's friend in
the third stanza. Even though he denies it in the concluding couplet, the
poet seems to resent the friend for causing a rift in their relationship. As
mentioned, the Sonnet does end on a positive note with the poet ready to
forgive his friend, content to accept that disappointment in this life is
wholly natural. "Two Renaissance commonplaces, the sun-king comparison
and the sun-son word play, are put to such good use in the friend's behalf
that "out alack," the emphatic but conventional phrase denoting the
speaker's regret, seems no more than a polite formula. The excuse offered in
the couplet may be unconvincing in the view of the next two Sonnets, but it
is so plausible within the limits of this one that the quatrains seem to
exist mainly to provide grounds for it" [Hilton Landry, Interpretations
in Shakespeare's Sonnets, Berkeley: U of CP,
1964. 58]. J.D. Wilson argues that you can trace the story of the young man's
transgressions by reading the Sonnets in this order: 48, 57, 58, 61; 40, 41,
41; 33, 34, 35; 92, 93, 94. |