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When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heav’n with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
5
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
10
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising,
From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
1 fortune] Fortune 2 outcast] out-cast 3 heav’n] heauen 6 Featured] Featur’d possessed]
possest 11 Like . . . arising,] (Like . . . arising ) lark] Larke 12 heaven’s] Heauens 14 kings] Kings
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30 Still in solitude, the poet takes stock of
his past losses and failures, rendered
in legal and financial metaphors,
weeping for them afresh, until he
thinks, consolingly, of his friend.
1 sessions judicial proceedings or formal examination, with a play on the
older meaning of ‘session’, ‘the state
or posture of being seated’ (OED 1a)
2 summon up cause to appear as if in
a judicial investigation; with a play on
‘sum’ (v.) = enumerate, call to financial account
remembrance . . . past Cf. Wisdom
of Solomon (OT Apocrypha), 11.12,
‘For a double grief came upon them,
and a groaning for the remembrance
of things past’ (E.E.D.-J.)
3 sigh sigh for
4 dear time’s waste the expiry of time
that was loved by him, or valuable to
him: to ‘waste time’ did not always
have adverse connotations; cf. VA 24,
AYL 2.4.94.
5 unused to flow Cf. Othello’s description of his eyes as ‘unused to the melting mood’ (Oth 5.2.35) when in a vein
of reminiscence and retrospection.
6 dateless night night that will never
come to an end; cf. 14.14 and n.: suggests that legal restrictions are not
here applicable
cancelled another legal term, denoting bonds which are no longer valid;
cf. l. 12
8 th’expense loss, with financial associations (OED 1b, with this example)
9 grievances sorrows, traumas, which
have gone before, belong to the past;
perhaps also grievances for which,
until now, he has foregone to grieve (cf.
OED forgo, forego 5, 6)
10 heavily laboriously, sadly
from . . . o’er count, enumerate each
sorrow, woe to woe suggesting ‘ “o” to
“o” ’, and an account book full of (a)
groans; (b) empty figures, noughts;
and for ‘tell o’er’ as ‘enumerate
(griefs)’, cf. Oth 3.3.171–2: ‘O, what
damned minutes tells he o’er / Who
dotes yet doubts, suspects yet strongly loves.’
11 account narrative; financial reckoning
fore-bemoaned moan the closeness
of the phrase to grievances foregone
only two lines before enacts the repetitive grieving that is described.
fore-bemoaned fore-bemoanèd
13 dear friend picks up ‘dear time’ in
l. 4: the friend’s ‘dearness’, or value,
compensates for all previous sorrows.
7
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