Sonnet 124: If My Dear Love Were but the Child of State
Sonnet 124: If My Dear Love Were but the Child of State - form Summary
Steadfast Structure, Moral Claim
This poem is a Shakespearean sonnet that uses the sonnet's built-in argument structure to assert constancy in love. The three quatrains present hypothetical threats—fortune, fashion, and policy—and reject them as explanations for the speaker’s affection. The final couplet furnishes a compact moral judgment, calling out contemporaries who mistake appearance for virtue. The poem’s tight volta and concluding couplet consolidate its claim that true love is steady and autonomous.
Read Complete AnalysesIf my dear love were but the child of state, It might for Fortune’s bastard be unfathered, As subject to Time’s love or to Time’s hate, Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered. No, it was builded far from accident; It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls Under the blow of thralled discontent, Whereto th’ inviting time our fashion calls: It fears not policy, that heretic, Which works on leases of short-number’d hours, But all alone stands hugely politic, That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers. To this I witness call the fools of time, Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.
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