credited with the ability to prophesy, and poets who
wrote of beauties of the past were merely “prefi guring”
the young man because they were unable to see him as
clearly as the speaker can. Like the characters in Plato’s
ALLEGORY of the Cave in book 7 of Plato’s The Republic,
the antique poets can only sense the transcendent
beauty embodied in the young man through their con-
tact with less worthy objects. Because they saw him
only in their imagination, “with divining eyes” (l. 11),
they were unable to do the young man justice. Despite
their gifts as poets, “They had not still enough your
worth to sing” (l. 12). Many editors change the word
still in this line to skill, but “still enough” allows for a
greater range of meaning: Enough inspiration? Enough
wisdom? Enough time? Enough skill?
In the couplet, as in Sonnet 23 and elsewhere, the
speaker then confesses that the young man’s beauty
has left him not just tongue-tied but tongue-less: “For
we, which now behold these present days, / Have
eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise” (ll. 13–
14). Living in the present, in the presence of the
young man, the poet can be amazed by his beauty but
cannot fi nd words to describe it adequately. The
explanation the narrator offers for his silence is, in
part, that other poets have already written some of
the best lines. But Shakespeare is here playing a rhe-
torical trick as well: At least some readers of his son-
nets would be familiar with the love poetry this
sonnet describes, and by promising that the young
man exceeds all existing descriptions of beauty, the
poet describes that beauty in the highest possible
terms without himself having to fi nd the right words
for it. He claims to lack the ability to speak in tongues,
or to be inspired to speak, as were the New Testa-
ment’s apostles, by tongues of fl ame, and yet he has
managed to make an eloquent plea that conveys the
young man’s extraordinary beauty.
See also ENGLISH SONNET, SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS
(OVERVIEW).
FURTHER READING
Go, Kenji. “Unemending the Emendation of ‘Still’ in Shake-
speare’s Sonnet 106.” Studies in Philology 98, no. 1 (2001):
114–142.
Catherine Loomis
Shakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 109 (“O, never
say that I was false of heart”) WILLIAM SHAKE-
SPEARE (1599) Sonnet 109 commences a number of
SONNETs that use travel as a reason for the poet’s wan-
ing attention to his patron. The fi rst QUATRAIN empha-
sizes that he is not being unfaithful or indifferent,
though it may seem that the fl ame of his interest has
diminished (l. 2). Indeed, he points out that his very
soul resides in his friend’s heart. The poet further pro-
claims, in the second quatrain, that even if he travels
(seeks other sources of PATRONAGE), he returns with all
his fervor for his patron intact. At the same time, the
poet seems to take offense at the implication that he is
being disloyal to his addressee, and in the third qua-
train, he points out that he would never “leave for
nothing all thy sum of good” (l. 12). The fi nal COUPLET
summarizes the speaker’s sentiments by compliment-
ing the friend (likening him to a rose) and declaring
that the speaker’s entire universe is found in his friend.
As the sonnets progress, it seems that the speaker has
begun to distance himself from his patron, and the
closeness detailed in earlier poems seems to be dimin-
ishing as time and interest alter for the speaker.
See also SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM; SHAKESPEARE’S SON-
NETS (OVERVIEW).
Joseph E. BeckerShakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 115 (“Those
lines that I have writ before do lie”) WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE (1599) Though many of WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE’s SONNETs engage in the monumentum aere
perennius (from the poet Horace, a monument more
lasting than bronze) trope, this poem does so in a novel
and unique manner, combining two themes of the
SONNET SEQUENCE: immortality through procreation
and immortality through artistic creation. The trope
fi gures the poem as a verbal or textual monument,
which will outlast both the sonnet’s speaker and the
object of desire. In other cases in the sequence, the
speaker has encouraged the young man to beget chil-
dren and thereby create a lasting monument to himself
in the images of his own children, but here the love
that the speaker has for the young man, exemplifi ed
through the poem itself, is described as an immortal
and ever-growing child.SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS: SONNET 115 387