![]() The qualifier in line 10, “Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words”, possibly pushes the balance the other way, towards irony (as, too, might the phrase “wondrous excellence”) but equally plausibly it simply remarks that the poet has a variety of means for expressing the same sentiment. The diction isn’t dull, but it deliberately refrains from fireworks. That’s possible, but the verse somehow lacks the gulped-back energy of irony. It has been argued that the poem’s voice is ironical. The liturgical sounding repetition and rhythm of line four (almost on the verge of a prayer-book parody) readies us for the idea of a trinity of virtues, which will become “all my argument” (and, in the closing couplet, perhaps a bit of virtue-bragging). Prompted by the admission that “all alike my songs and praises be / To one, of one, still such, and ever so”, he sets out to go beyond this verbal “constancy” and investigate the essential qualities of love. ![]() We don’t know who, if anyone, has previously denounced his love for the “ fair youth” as “idolatry”: perhaps it’s simply his own self-criticism he’s challenging. ![]() Sonnet 105 seems to me a particularly meditative one, voiced as if the poet were speaking to himself rather than delivering the fine flourishes and figures of the lover’s address to his beloved. ![]()
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