Sonnet 108

Aggiornato

Shakespeare. Sonnet 1

«What’s in the brain that ink may character
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?». 

Admitting that he risks running out of new ideas and “I must each day say o’er the very same” about the young man, the poet replaces newly imagined creation with ritual; redundant love finds new meaning in repetition “So that eternal love in love’s fresh case / Weighs not the dust and injury of age.”

Sonnet 108
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What’s in the brain that ink may character
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
What’s new to speak, what new to register,
That may express my love or thy dear merit?
Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must, each day say o’er the very same,
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallow’d thy fair name.
So that eternal love in love’s fresh case
Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page,
Finding the first conceit of love there bred
Where time and outward form would show it dead.

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Psychologically unhealthy, the poet again regresses to viewing himself and the young man as “thou mine, I thine.”  He relives the past, but he does so in such a way that the past seems newly fresh: “Finding the first conceit of love there bred / Where time and outward form would show it dead.” Because reality entails past hurts and accusations, the poet chooses to live in a fantasy world where he’s not forced to remember the youth’s narcissistic treatment of him.

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Credits

English audio from YouTube Channel Socratica

Summary from Cliffsnotes.com

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