Sonnet 107
Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
mortality
time
love
prophecy
Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured
And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
Incertainties now crown themselves assured
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes,
Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes:
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.
What It Means
The feared catastrophes have been disproved. 'The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured.' Shakespeare's love has outlasted the feared disaster. He writes now with new confidence. This is often read as a reference to a specific historical event: the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603, when England survived the feared succession crisis, or possibly her illness in 1596.
Context
Part of the Fair Youth sequence. The 'mortal moon' line is the most debated allusion in the sequence. The 1603 interpretation dates this sonnet to around that year, following Elizabeth I's death.
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