Not by rude force, but sweetest sovereignty There shall he find all vices’ overthrow, Stella, those fair lines which true goodness show. Jonathan Smith is Professor of English at Hanover College, Hanover, Indiana.Let him but learn of love to read in thee, Next time (weekend of June 26): Sonnet 78 All the qualities mentioned are those that can, with honor, be acknowledged by an admirer in public but the speaker dreams of other “blessings” from Stella, of a kind to make a “maiden muse. The verb “Makes” at the start of line 12, despite its singularity in modern grammar, clearly has as subjects all the ten features named above, and starts a two-line thought that, by his acquaintance with Stella, the speaker is quite “fully,” quite thoroughly, “blessed.” It is another of Sidney’s sonnets (like 71 and 72) where a perfectly romantic ideal is achieved in thirteen lines, with a “but”-or in this case “Yet”-opening the poem’s final line. –and conversation (given a two-line description to finish the series) that puts the listener in heaven. –a voice which makes the “soul” (ordinarily the aloof immortal part within the mortal) want to take up residence in the relatively humble place of the ears –words which distill (“sublime”) the rarest form (“quintessence”) of “bliss” –skin that is fairer than fair (“white”) –lips literally to die for that is, even death would be a low (“mean”) price to pay for a kiss –a hand that exercises enormous sway even “without touch”
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–a presence which lights up even “dark hearts” –a face, the reading (“lecture”) of which defines “perfect beauty” –looks (i.e., from those blazing, darting eyes) that create “joy” and “delight” The second of a pair of sonnets in hexameters, the extra length provides spaciousness for an extended blazon, running eleven lines and combining tangible bodily features (face, hands, lips, skin) with intangible actions (looks, words, voice) and abstract qualities (presence, grace, conversation) to make up the entire picture of perfection:
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And given the vagaries of Elizabethan punctuation, the phrase “Atlas might” can be understood two ways: the more obvious is with “might” as an auxiliary verb for an understood “do” but we can also imagine an apostrophe after “Atlas,” making “might” the noun that means “strength.” Reading notes: “heaven” in line 11 is (as usual) one syllable, and “quiet’st” in line 12 is two, divided “qui” and “et’st.” Somewhat unusual word senses are “lecture”-meaning “reading”-in line 2, and “sublime”-a transitive verb meaning “distill” or “extract”-in line 8. I suggest you click here to open the sonnet in a separate window, so that you can refer directly to it as you read on through the analysis. Yet ah, my maiden muse doth blush to tell the rest. That in no more but these I might be fully blessed: Makes me in my best thoughts and quiet’st judgment see That conversation sweet, where such high comforts be,Īs construed in true speech, the name of heaven it bears, That voice, which makes the soul plant himself in the ears: Those words, which do sublime the quintessence of bliss That skin, whose past-praise hue scorns this poor term of ‘white’ Those lips, which make death’s pay a mean price for a kiss That hand, which without touch holds more than Atlas might: That grace, which Venus weeps that she herself doth miss That presence, which doth give dark hearts a living light
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That face, whose lecture shows what perfect beauty is Those looks, whose beams be joy, whose motion is delight