Page:Shakespeare's Sonnets (1923) Yale.djvu/97

Shakespeare's Sonnets ' (cf. l. 8). To others, the sonnet celebrates the defeat of the Armada, or the reconciliation of Elizabeth with Essex. It is equally possible to read this sonnet as merely one more in the series in which Shakespeare proclaims his devotion to be superior to fate and death.

Finding the first conceit of love there bred, Where time and outward form would show it dead. Finding the first love still inspired in a face whose appearance of age would make it unlovely to others.

These lines refer, probably, though not necessarily, to Shakespeare's career as an actor. They lament, as do the following two sonnets, the associations forced upon him by poverty.

None else to me, nor I to none alive, That my steel'd sense or changes right or wrong. So far as I am concerned, no one but you (and I live for you alone) can influence my callous feeling to right or wrong.

that my adder's sense To critic and to flatterer stopped are. This may be a reminiscence of Psalm 58. 4, 5: 'Even like the deaf adder, that stoppeth her ears; Which refuseth to hear the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely.'

My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue. Malone explains this line: 'The sincerity of my affection is the cause of my untruth; i.e., of not seeing objects truly, such as they appear to the rest of mankind.'

In line 12, the eye has been compared to the taster for king Mind. If the eye gives him a poisoned cup, it is not such a great sin because the eye drinks the poison first.

How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted. 'How have mine eyes started from their hollows in the fever fits of my disease.' Dowden.