Sonnet 31
Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,
friendship
memory
love
mortality
Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,
Which I by lacking have supposed dead,
And there reigns love and all love's loving parts,
And all those friends which I thought buried.
How many a holy and obsequious tear
Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye
As interest of the dead, which now appear
But things removed that hidden in thee lie!
Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,
Who all their parts of me to thee did give;
That due of many now is thine alone:
Their images I loved I view in thee,
And thou, all they, hast all the all of me.
What It Means
All the friends Shakespeare has lost to death are not really gone — they live in the young man. His heart contains all those earlier loves. Shakespeare has been mourning the dead, but they're all present in this one person, as if concentrated and preserved. The logic is consoling: nothing has been lost, just relocated. The young man is a repository for all the love Shakespeare has ever felt.
Context
Part of the Fair Youth sequence, continuing the meditation on lost friends from Sonnet 30.
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