Sonnet 75

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Shakespeare. Sonnet 1

«So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet-season’d showers are to the ground». 

The poet is torn by contrary feelings that he cannot reconcile. His relationship with the youth alternates between pleasure — “Sometime all full with feasting on your sight” — and uneasiness — “And by and by clean starved for a look.”

Sonnet 75
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So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet-season’d 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 better’d that the world may see my pleasure;
Sometime all full with feasting on your sight
And by and by clean starved 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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Nor does he know whether to be alone with his love or show it off to the world. Embedded in these words lurks a sense of dependence: “So are you to my thoughts as food to life, / Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground.” Following as it does the morbid sonnets dealing with death, in this sonnet the poet gains no pleasure either from fulfillment or desire: “Possessing or pursuing no delight / Save what is had or must from you be took.”

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Credits

English audio from YouTube Channel Socratica

Summary from Cliffsnotes.com

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