Three Great Love Sonnets – Analysis and Commentary

THREE GREAT LOVE SONNETS – ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY

Sonnet Basics: http://www.sonnets.org/basicforms.htm

—Nelson Miller, “Basic Sonnet Forms”

 

Text of the sonnets in this post are copied from the Poetry Foundation website.

SONNET XVIII: SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMER’S DAY?

By William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

See: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45087/sonnet-18-shall-i-compare-thee-to-a-summers-day

Shakespeare’s most famous sonnet transports us to a time and place when the English people basked in the glory of the seasons and contemplated the mysteries of love, nature, and eternity—the latter not forbidding but shining. Escorted by the Bard down a lyrical path, we imagine the “gold complexion” of the sun and breathe in the winds shaking the “darling buds of May” of merry Renaissance England. All’s well, we are assured, and so the poem ends well—eternal, as time permits.

The Bard of Avon

SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE 43: HOW DO I LOVE THEE? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS

By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

See: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43742/sonnets-from-the-portuguese-43-how-do-i-love-thee-let-me-count-the-ways

This extraordinary poem reaches from well past the last one hundred years as one among the greatest expressions of romantic love. It exudes freshness and radiates an ardor that cannot but move us. We marvel at the highly original language and exquisite imagination.

There is a fullness, virtue, purity, depth, and spiritual quality to the sentiments expressed that attain the very limits of our humanity and intimate the Divine.

Fullness—“I love thee to the depth and breadth and height / My soul can reach.”

Virtue—“I love thee freely, as men strive for right.”

Purity—“I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.”

Depth—“I love thee with the passion put to use / …with my childhood’s faith.”

Spiritual quality—“…and, if God choose, / I shall but love thee better after death.”

Words that feed the heart and satisfy the soul.

The Portuguese

ONE HUNDRED LOVE SONNETS: XVII

By Pablo Neruda

Original language Spanish

Translated by Mark Eisner

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz, 

or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: 

I love you as one loves certain obscure things, 

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries 

the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself, 

and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose 

from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where, 

I love you directly without problems or pride:

I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,

except in this form in which I am not nor are you, 

so close that your hand upon my chest is mine, 

so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

See: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49236/one-hundred-love-sonnets-xvii

Neruda would return to the motif of romantic love multiple times, notably in One Hundred Love Sonnets, published in 1959. “Sonnet XVII” in this collection illustrates well his mastery of the lyric.

Our appreciation of any poet not writing in the English language depends substantially on the quality of the translation. Fortunately, the English translation of this poem by Mark Eisner is excellent.

Each line of this splendid poem harbors a trove of meanings, imaginings, and feelings. They inhabit, as it were, a tenuous penumbra wherein figurative language simultaneously communicates and obscures. How does love exist “between the shadow and the soul”? Is there space in between? “Your hand on my chest is mine”—do these words express oneness of being with the beloved or do they describe some mysteriously separate union?

A la Casa de Isla Negra