These statements about Cupid’s suppositions become, by indirection, a complimentary blazon of Stella’s features, and Cupid is clearly a stand-in here for the speaker’s own amorous desires.
The sentence’s main clause takes only the first three-fifths of line nine:Īnd is followed by an adverbial phrase that stretches to the end of line eleven: What words so e’er she speaks, persuades for thee. The eight parallel clauses are basically one line (five feet, ten syllables) each, except that the first is shortened a foot by the opening address to Cupid, and the seventh steals an extra foot from the end of the sixth: The word “that” effectively repeats the word “because” each time, so you can either imagine an implied “because that” (proper Elizabethan usage) in the first line, or a one-syllable substitute for “because” at the head of each new clause-whichever makes more sense to you. The octave is one dependent clause comprised, in turn, of eight parallel clauses. This poem is just two sentences long, the first stating a premise that takes eleven lines, and the second shooting it down in a mere three. I suggest you click here to open the sonnet in a separate window, so that you can refer directly to it as you read on through the analysis. That to win it, is all the skill and pain. So fortified with wit, stored with disdain, Thou countest Stella thine, like those whose powers,Ĭry, “Victory, this fair day all is ours!” That her clear voice lifts thy fame to the skies What words so e’er she speaks, persuades for thee, That her grace gracious makes thy wrongs, that she, That in her breast thy pap well sugared lies, That her sweet breath makes oft thy flames to rise,
#Sonnet 12 full
That those lips swell, so full of thee they be, That from her locks, thy day-nets, none ‘scapes free, Cupid, because thou shin’st in Stella’s eyes,