Sonnet 29

Sonnet 29 is about the power of love, platonic or romantic, to lift a person out of the depths of depression. The speaker spends the first half of the poem describing a hopeless state with great detail, the better to contrast this seemingly unconquerable misery with the liberating effect of love. The tone and diction of the first half builds incrementally, and with each additional struggle the speaker presents adding to his feelings of despair, withdrawal, and anguish. However, before the speaker completely collapses, the poet uses a volta, or a dramatic rhetorical shift, to completely change the mood and import of the poem. Rather than succumbing to his depression, the speaker thinks of his love, which is enough to reverse even the most painful thoughts almost instantly, returning the speaker to a state of gratitude, joy, and peace. The poem’s grammar echoes this structure; it comprises one sentence with two clauses: a conditional clause that describes the speaker’s troubles and a main clause that describes the saving power of love.

The first quatrain is a litany of symptoms of depression and anxiety: The speaker details incredibly difficult moments of public shame, of being “in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes” (Line 1)—suffering humiliation because of damage to his reputation or his finances. He must endure this painful situation on his own, having become a pariah: “I all alone beweep my outcast state” (Line 2). He has sunk so low that his prayers no longer have any efficacy, as even “deaf heaven” ignores his “bootless,” or useless, pleading (Line 3). The speaker feels that he lacks agency and his life is completely out of his control. God’s failure to answer not only makes him feel even more alone, until all he can really do is weep, alone with his miserable self. With no one to share his burden with, he can only turn his anger disappointment inward, to “look upon myself and curse my fate” (Line 4). His despair and frustration are so overwhelming, that there is nothing to do but resort to self-hatred.

In the second quatrain, the speaker leans in to his self-pity and explores his jealousy and envious desires. Lacking the ability to fix his life, the speaker turns to escapism and comparison, pointlessly wishing that he were somebody else. As he sits, he imagines other men who have qualities or abilities that he lacks. Sometimes, the speaker envies another man’s internal fortitude or emotional stability, like a man who looks forward to the future, “more rich in hope” (Line 5), because he is not suffering from a depressive episode. Other times, the speaker fixates on those with external advantages: like a man with better “Features” or “like him with friends possessed” (Line 6). Another object of envy is talent and ability, as the speaker finds himself “Desiring this man’s art, and this man’s scope” (Line 7). The speaker’s inferiority only grows as he picks out something to admire in every man around him except himself. Cowed by the achievements of these superior men, the speaker now cannot even enjoy the things he loves the most. In an uncannily accurate description of what modern readers might recognize as clinical depression, the speaker describes his complete anhedonia: “With what I most enjoy contented least” (Line 8). When the speaker is in this state he cannot see a single good thing about himself or his life—a scary and sad condition.

However, the third quatrain marks a dramatic about-face in the poem, marking the shift with the conjunction “yet” (Line 9), which is used to signal a contrast or contradiction. Even when the speaker has sunk so low that he starts beating himself up all the more for getting into this state—“in these thoughts myself almost despising” (Line 9)—there is one thing that can help him get out of his own head. All he has to do to feel better is “Haply I think on thee,” the poem’s addressee (Line10). When he does think about this person, the speaker’s emotional transformation is dramatic. No longer is the speaker unfavorably comparing himself to other men; rather, he now reminds himself of a scene from nature, “the lark at break of day arising / from sullen earth” (Lines 11-12). The lark flies at dawn, the liminal space between day and night, leaving darkness and rising into light and symbolizing the way the speaker leaves his shroud of sadness, uncertainty, and fear when thoughts of his lover remind him that the sun will rise again. The speaker’s changed perspective and his reclaimed memory of hope bring him back to his faith. Where previously he felt that God had abandoned him, thinking of his love makes his soul “sings hymns at heaven’s gate” (Line 12). No longer does he expect God to intervene in his misery; instead, his newfound happiness inspires him to create art for the sake of delighting heaven.

In the last two lines of the poem, the speaker returns to earthly concerns. Whereas before he bemoaned his loss of fortune and his public humiliation, and felt jealous of the privilege and possessions of other men, now thinking of his love is enough to restore the feeling of being materially successful. Knowing that he is securely loved “such wealth brings / That then I scorn to change my state with kings” (Lines 13-14). Love has raised him so high that he no longer wishes to be someone else, not even a king.