Sonnet 27 is one of 154

sonnets A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's inventio ...

published by

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

in a

quarto Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...

titled ''Shakespeare's Sonnets'' in 1609. It is a part of the Fair Youth group of sonnets, and the first in a group of five sonnets that portray the poet in solitude and meditating from a distance on the young man. A theme of the first two of the group (sonnets 27 - 28) regards the night and restlessness, which is a motif also found in the sonnets of

Petrarch Francesco Petrarca (; 20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited ...

Analysis

In ''Sonnet 27'' the weary poet cannot find rest — not day or night. He goes to bed weary after working hard, which is the "toil" of line one, and the "travail" of line two. As soon as he lies down, another journey begins in his thoughts ("To work my mind") — the destination is the young man, who is far from where the poet is ("from far where I abide"). The poet's thoughts take that journey, and though he sees nothing but the darkness of night, his imagination presents to him an image of the young man, an image that seems to hang before him in the dark, like a jewel. This vision makes the "black night" beautiful — the word "black" is equated with ugliness and "night" has a feminine aspect. The reader is led to expect this vision to improve the poet's lot, but the final couplet suggests that it only adds to the restless misery of the weary poet, and "no quiet" can the poet find.Hammond, Gerald. ''The Reader and the Young Man Sonnets''. Barnes & Noble. 1981. p. 111-112.

Structure

Sonnet 27 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet, which consists of three quatrains followed by a final couplet. It follows the

rhyme scheme A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the end of each line of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme; lines designated with the same letter all rhyme with each other. An example of the ABAB r ...

ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, and is written in

iambic pentameter Iambic pentameter () is a type of metric line used in traditional English poetry and verse drama. The term describes the rhythm, or meter, established by the words in that line; rhythm is measured in small groups of syllables called " feet". "Iam ...

, a

metre The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its prefi ...

in which each line has five feet, and each foot has two syllables accented weak/strong. Most of the lines are regular iambic pentameter including line three:

 ×   /    ×  /  ×   /  ×   /  ×   / 
But then begins a journey in my head (27.3)

:/ = ''ictus'', a metrically strong syllabic position. × = ''nonictus''.

Notes

References

*Baldwin, T. W. (1950). ''On the Literary Genetics of Shakspeare's Sonnets''. University of Illinois Press, Urbana. *Hubler, Edwin (1952). ''The Sense of Shakespeare's Sonnets''. Princeton University Press, Princeton. *Schoenfeldt, Michael (2007). ''The Sonnets: The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's Poetry''. Patrick Cheney, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

External links

*
Paraphrase and analysis (Shakespeare-online)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sonnet 027 British poems Sonnets by William Shakespeare