“Sonnet 29” by William Shakespeare, 1609; p 585

 

Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 29” follows an abab cdcd efef gg pattern, also identifiable as three quatrains followed by a couplet. In this poem, our speaker compares himself to those around him, and he feels insignificant. However, when he thinks about the one he loves, he feels like he has more than any other man. I find this poem to be a great representation of balancing ambition and love: discovering what is truly important. This is also a callback to that sense of individual worth and finding personal value in a world that is constantly in competition with itself. What can you find to justify your existence among the masses? For this speaker, that justification is love:

      “When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

       For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

       That then I scorn to change my state with kings.”