This
sonnet in is a description of the speaker's own work: meaning the leaves
(pages), lines of verse, and rhymes that constitute his verse. The poet's love is pictured
holding the book, reading it, and appreciating the declaration of love contained in
it.
Essentially the sonnet expresses an identity between the poet and his
work. The man's verse itself becomes "happy" and is glorified by his love's touching
and reading it, just as the man himself is gladdened and exalted through her. She ennobles the
leaves, lines, and rhymes; she holds them in love's "soft bands" and makes a captive
of them. She illuminates them with a "starry light," and they are bathed in the
"sacred brooke":
Of Helicon,
whence she derived is.
We thus see a
reciprocity or symbiosis between the poet, represented by his work, and the woman loved by him.
He has produced this work for her, but by itself it has no meaning. She grants significance and
power to it, and at the same time, she possesses it. So, because an identity exists between poet
and poem, in her taking possession of the latter, she is also confirming her captivation of the
man and her ennobling of him.
The sonnet altogether is a chain of
personifications of the inanimate writing created by the speaker. In linking himself to his
poetry, the poet is also saying that his love is dependent on how the object of it, his
mistress, receives and understands that poetry. Therefore his love is seemingly not
unconditional:
Leaves, lines and rymes seeke her to please
alone,
Whom if ye please, I care for other none.
In a more literal sense, the speaker simply wishes her to appreciate his work. But
metaphorically speaking, he is his poetry, and her love of it confers that
love on him as well.
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