Sonnet 75: So Are You to My Thoughts as Food to Life
Sonnet 75: So Are You to My Thoughts as Food to Life - form Summary
Sonnet of Opposing States
This sonnet uses the sonnet form to present a speaker consumed by contradictory emotions toward a beloved. Through paired metaphors of nourishment and possession, the poem alternates between satiation and starvation, pride and fear, presence and absence. The tightly wound structure heightens the oscillation: the speaker constantly shifts from enjoying the beloved to fearing loss, conveying obsessive dependence and restless longing within a compact argument.
Read Complete AnalysesSo are you to my thoughts as food to life, Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground; And for the peace of you I hold such strife As ‘twixt a miser and his wealth is found. Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure; Now counting best to be with you alone, Then bettered that the world may see my pleasure; Sometimes all full with feasting on your sight, And by and by clean starvèd for a look; Possessing or pursuing no delight Save what is had, or must from you be took. Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day, Or gluttoning on all, or all away.
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