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Sonnet 33

The original print of the sonnet in the 1609 quarto

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all-triumphant splendor on my brow;
But, out, alack! he was but one hour mine,
The region cloud hath mask’d him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven’s sun staineth.

William Shakespeare

Reading of the sonnet

About

William Shakespeare's Sonnet 33 is the first sonnet in the group known as the estrangement sonnets, which are sonnets 33-36, written by the English playwright and poet. It is one of the 154 sonnets written during his lifetime. As one of the Fair Youth Sequence poems the poet expresses his love for a young man and the poem refers to a sensual fault by his beloved. It is believed this sonnet is about his relationship with the Earl of Southampton.

It was published in 1609 and contains 118 words in the Shakespearean sonnet form.

Analysis

• Consists of 14 lines and the first 12 are divided into three quatrains with four lines each. The final two lines are a rhyming couplet.
• Iambic Pentameter
• In the first quatrain, the narrator compares the young man with nature's beauty e.g. the sun and the meadows.
• The second quatrain is concerned with the poet's relationship with the young man.
• The third quatrain is thought to have been addressed to Shakespeare's son, Hamnet, who died aged 11.
• The couplet makes the reader feel uncomfortable

Glossary

Word	Definition
alchemy	to turn something into gold
anon	soon
rack	a mass of streaming clouds