height above the horizon has been charted (“taken,” l.
8) with a quadrant or sextant so that the captain of the
ship can plot a safe course and cease wandering.
In the third QUATRAIN, the speaker brings the poem
back to an examination of love and time, and he states
that true love is not the “fool” (l. 9) or plaything, of
time, even though lips and cheeks—once rosy in
youth—are the victim of Time’s “sickle” (l. 10). Here
the poet conjures up an image of Father Time with a
sickle (rather than a scythe) that he uses fi guratively to
indicate the power of Time, who works like a harvester
to cut down not only the youth or the aged, but espe-
cially lovers. The word compass (l. 10) refers to the
range of the sickle, but it can also call to mind the nau-
tical imagery in the second quatrain, for a compass
allows a sailor to plot a safe course for the vessel. Even
though time may have a negative effect on the youth
and beauty of the lovers, their love “alters not” (l. 11)
over the passage of time and continues until “the edge
of doom” (l. 12), or “doomsday,” the last day of the
world. The speaker then indicates that if he is in error
about this description of love, then his writing is untrue
and no one has ever loved. What is recorded is deemed
true not only in terms of the speaker’s skill in descrip-
tion, but in all lovers’ experiences throughout time.
See also SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM; SHAKESPEARE’S SON-
NETS (OVERVIEW).
Theodora A. JankowskiShakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 124 (“If my
dear love were but the child of state”) WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE (1599) Sonnet 124 brings the reader
near the conclusion of the speaker’s passion for the
young man, sometimes called the LOVELY BOY,
expressed in a mixture of social, religious, mercantile,
and gardening metaphors. He proclaims his love’s
organic and self-sustaining nature until the fi nal COU-
PLET, when he calls on rather suspect witnesses to his
natural sentiments.
In the sonnet’s fi rst QUATRAIN, the speaker reveals
that his love is not motivated by the beloved’s position
in society and, therefore, is not a passing fancy or a
self-serving passion. It matters not whether “[w]eeds
among weeds or fl owers with fl owers [are] gathered”
(l. 4). The gardener cannot keep the weeds out from
among the fl owers no matter how hard he tries. Love,
like the English garden, is subject more to nature than
nurture. The speaker has come into his love naturally,
without regard to human-created distinctions that call
some “weeds” and others “fl owers.” Human intrusion
will not undo his love.
In the second quatrain, the speaker asserts that his
feeling of love does not come or go by chance or by
“fashion” (l. 8). Society’s whims do not affect his love.
The contrived expectations or dictates of “th’inviting
time” which enslaves people has no power over his
love (l. 8).
The third quatrain immediately declares the strength
of his love in terms both religious and mercantile. His
love is not a “heretic / Which works on leases of short-
numbered hours” (ll. 9–10). It is not a product of
recanting cowardice, a quick and sure means to pos-
sessing his beloved. Rather, his love grows from its
own prudent nature, “all alone and hugely politic,”
without artifi ce or fear of any external interference (l.
11). The last line of the quatrain reinforces its natural
state once again. In the garden, love grows in a natural
harmonious balance, neither too hot nor too moist, the
perfect balance of the humors.
The concluding COUPLET calls this natural state of his
love’s engendering and its self-nourishing quality into
question, again using the language of both religion and
mercantilism. These fi nal lines conjure up false reli-
gious conversions. Here the speaker summons to “wit-
ness” those who have feigned religious conversions at
the end of their life and, by so doing, he turns his rev-
elation of naturally balanced, unimpeded, self-sustain-
ing love on its head (l. 13). The speaker’s love, which
grew naturally from within, undeterred and peerless,
can be recognized and verifi ed only by those question-
able converts.
The nature of his love has, in the end, left the
speaker in dangerous company at the end of the 16th
century. Queen ELIZABETH I, though hardly a religious
zealot or a rigid enforcer as was her half sister, MARY I,
did assert her position as head of the infant Church of
England. Recusants would and could be punished, and
unrepentant Catholics were executed, especially in the
last decades of her reign. Is the speaker then sayingSHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS: SONNET 124 389