Sonnet 30: When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent Thought
Sonnet 30: When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent Thought - meaning Summary
Memory Healed by Love
Shakespeare's Sonnet 30 describes a speaker who sits in solitary recollection and mourns past losses, regrets, and vanished pleasures. Remembering deceased friends and old loves renews pain, as he recounts griefs as if they must be paid again. The poem closes with a resolute reversal: thinking of a particular beloved turns memory's accounting into consolation, restoring what was lost and ending sorrow through the power of personal attachment.
Read Complete AnalysesWhen to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste. Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night, And weep afresh love’s long since cancelled woe, And moan th’ expense of many a vanished sight. Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before. But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restored and sorrows end.
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