Sonnet 86: Was It the Proud Full Sail of His Great Verse
Sonnet 86: Was It the Proud Full Sail of His Great Verse - meaning Summary
Creative Rivalry and Impotence
The speaker confronts a rival poet whose eloquence seems to silence him. He asks whether the rival's inflated verse or supernatural inspiration killed his creativity, then rejects those explanations. Instead he admits that when the rival addressed the young man the speaker loves, the beloved"s presence filled the subject so fully that the speaker "lacked matter" to write. The poem locates poetic failure in rivalry over the Fair Youth.
Read Complete AnalysesWas it the proud full sail of his great verse, Bound for the prize of all-too-precious you, That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse, Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew? Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead? No, neither he, nor his compeers by night Giving him aid, my verse astonishèd. He nor that affable familiar ghost Which nightly gulls him with intelligence, As victors of my silence cannot boast; I was not sick of any fear from thence. But when your countenance filled up his line, Then lacked I matter, that enfeebled mine.
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