Summary

The poet is torn by contrary feelings that he cannot reconcile. His relationship with the youth alternates between pleasure — “Sometime all full with feasting on your sight” — and uneasiness — “And by and by clean starved for a look.” Nor does he know whether to be alone with his love or show it off to the world. Embedded in these words lurks a sense of dependence: “So are you to my thoughts as food to life, / Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground.” Following as it does the morbid sonnets dealing with death, in this sonnet the poet gains no pleasure either from fulfillment or desire: “Possessing or pursuing no delight / Save what is had or must from you be took.”