Sonnet 29
In a nutshell, a depressed loser somehow finds joy and
meaning in the sweetness of love. Life is worth living
after all.
This existential crisis is deep however; the speaker is full
of self-accusation and inner turmoil. He feels disgraced.
Out in the public sphere he knows the males are taking
note of his angst and his self-loathing is even having an
effect on Fortune - this guy is way down on his luck.
'I all alone beweep my outcast state' is one of the most
self-pitying moans ever put into iambics. What a sob
story.
The association here is with the old testament Job, who
cursed the day he was born (but did not curse God) for
his misfortune and lived in misery. No one would listen to
his pleas for help and understanding. Heaven hears not
his bootless (useless) cries.
He feels cursed, destiny has been cruel to him. He
spends time alone, perhaps staring into a mirror, and so
develops deep negative feelings about the world. The
successful people around him he especially loathes
So, this poor depressive is having a tough time, and
doesn't like being who he is. He wants to be someone
else, someone talented and handsome but he's not quite
certain he could handle being someone else - the things
that brought him happiness now make him more upset.
His emotional instability - note the trochees in lines five
and six - means that his envy of those more hopeful,
skilful and with broader social connections only worsens
matters. Note the this and that antithetical stance in line
seven, suggesting that the speaker is in danger of
tearing himself apart.
Historically it could have been an uncertain time for
William Shakespeare. If this sonnet was written around
1592 then the playwright and poet may well have been
feeling a bit down. The plague outbreak had caused all
theatres to close down, so he would have been unable
to perform his plays.
Plus, a certain older rival, Robert Greene, had written an
insulting deathbed notice, warning all playwrights to
beware of the 'upstart crow' who had taken London and
the theatre world by storm. Namely, one William
Shakespeare from rural Stratford-on-Avon.
Thankfully, redemption is at hand. Haply means by
chance, or by accident, or perhaps. And it so happens
that the speaker is thinking of his love and all at once the
world seems a brighter place. His state alters, he likens
the feeling to a lark rising in song (a popular simile with
Shakespeare); an almost religious outpouring.
Such is the optimism and inspiration gained from this
memory that the speaker now feels rich, wealthier than a
king, better off in all respects. The former darker world
fades away; life is refreshed and the speaker wouldn't
change places with a king.
Symbol Analysis
We only see this "lark" (a bird) once but it's the most
stunning and dominantimage in the poem. It helps us to
understand the speaker's changing mood and his
dramatic spiritual transformation. Over the course of the
sonnet, he goes from being in the depths of despair to a
state of spiritual nirvana that's expressed as the blissful
singing of a bird.
 Lines 10-12: Here, the speaker uses
a simile comparing his once depressed mood to
a "lark" that rises up from the "sullen earth" and
sings "hymns" at heaven's gate. That's pretty
dramatic, wouldn't you say? A "hymn" is a
religious song praising God, so there's a
suggestion here that our speaker feels closer to
God than he has in the past.
 The "lark" simile also reminds us that our
speaker is in a completely different mind frame
now than he was at the beginning of the sonnet.
At line 3, he said that "heav'n" was "deaf" to his
cries—meaning, God wasn't answering his
prayers. But now, our speaker is no longer
crying. Instead, he feels like a bird that's happily
singing away at "heaven's gate." Is that because
"heaven" (a.k.a. God) is no longer "deaf"?
 And, what is it that's brought about this sudden
and dramatic change in our speaker? He tells us
at line 10 that he feels like a "lark" when he
remembers the "sweet love" of another human
being. That's interesting because it's NOT God
that has brought about our speaker's spiritual
transformation. It's the love of some unnamed
mystery person that's got our speaker's spirits
soaring. So, maybe our speaker doesn't feel any
closer to God than he did before. Maybe he's
just decided that he's found a new kind of
"heaven."
 (Brain Snack: Shakespeare's kind of got a thing
for larks. He inserts an entire poem about a lark
singing at "heaven's gate" in a play
called Cymbeline. And, he makes a really big
deal about a lark inRomeo and Juliet, which you
can learn more about here.
Why is he saying it?
 The emotional state of the speaker in Sonnet 29
is one of depression: in the first line, he assumes
himself to be "in disgrace with fortune," meaning
he has been having bad luck. He also feels in
disgrace with "men's eyes," implying that the
general public looks on him unfavorably. This
could be real or imagined, but it is enforced in
line 2, when he bemoans his "outcast state."
Here, "state" refers to a state of being, and in
this case, he is cast out from society.
 Lines 3-4 make allusion to Job of the Old
Testament in the Bible, who was cast out onto a
dung heap and called to a God who didn't listen.
The poet finds himself in the same situation:
Heaven personified is God, and in this case he is
"deaf," making the poet's cries "bootless," or
useless. The idea of cursing one's fate also
hearkens to Job, who cursed himself after falling
out of God's favor.
 The speaker finds himself envying what others
have, and in lines 5-9 he sees almost everyone
as having something he lacks. He wishes to be
like "one more rich in hope," perhaps meaning
hopeful or literally wealthy; "featured like him,"
refers to someone who is handsome, with
beautiful features; and another is "with friends
possessed," or popular, unlike the poet (as has
been established in the first two lines). In line 7,
he envies the artistic talent of one man, and the
opportunities afforded someone else.
 The simile of a lark is developed in lines 10-12,
when the speaker describes the effect that a
thought of his love has on his "state," or
emotional well-being. The fact that the lark rises
from the "sullen earth" at "break of day" implies
that the day is much happier than the night; day
break is compared to the dawning of a thought
of the beloved. As the lark "sings hymns at
heaven's gate," so the poet's soul is invigorated
with the thought of the fair lord, and seems to
sing to the sky with rejuvenated hope.
 The final couplet of Sonnet 29 declares that this
joyfulness brought about by a thought of the fair
lord is enough to convince the speaker that he is
better off than royalty. Here, "state" is a pun: it
carries the meaning of emotional well-being, as
it did earlier in the poem, and suggests that the
love of the fair lord makes the speaker so happy
that all the wealth of a king would not be better.
But it also refers to a nation, or a kingdom.
 Sonnet 29" is a Shakespearean sonnet. Though the
form bears his name, Shakespeare didn't actually
invent it—he just popularized it. A Shakespearean
sonnet uses iambic pentameter, has 14 lines, and
follows a standard rhyme scheme. The first 12 lines
consist of three quatrains that follow an ABAB rhyme
scheme. The final two lines form a rhyming couplet.
Often in Shakespeare's sonnets, these units serve to
organize the content of the poem so that Shakespeare
starts talking about something new every four lines.
"Sonnet 29" is a little different, however. For
example, as one moves from line 4 to line 5, the
speaker continues to lay out his anxieties: the first 8
lines are a cascade of repetitive complaints. Indeed,
we don't even get a new sentence with the change of
rhyme in each quatrain: the whole poem is one long
sentence. It starts, in line 1, with the dependent
clause of a conditional sentence. Shakespeare is
usually very careful with the way he organizes his
poems, so that when a unit of rhyme ends a
grammatical unit also closes. The long sentence—and
the anxious, obsessive energy it embodies—thus
disrupt the formal organization of the Shakespearean
sonnet, with its usual rhetorical and grammatical
divisions. It suggests that the speaker of this
particular poem is so anxious and upset that he has
lost control of himself and his language.
The long sentence disrupts another important
characteristic of the Shakespearean sonnet. Sonnets
traditionally have a volta (or "turn), a place where
the argument of the poem changes or where the
speaker introduces a new perspective or idea. In
Shakespeare's sonnets, the volta usually comes at line
13. In earlier sonnet structures, like the Petrarchan
sonnet, the volta usually falls at the start of line 9.
Although this poem follows the usual rhyme scheme
of the Shakespearean sonnet , its volta comes in line
9, where the sentence enters its main clause; lines 13
and 14 reiterate and expand what one learns in lines
9-12. Once again, the disruption to formal
expectations for a Shakespearean sonnet suggest that
the speaker has lost control and is experiencing real
distress.

 Sonnet 29" is written in iambic pentameter—a meter
that Shakespeare uses throughout his dramatic and
poetic work. Take, for example, line 2:
I all alone beweep my outcast state
"Sonnet 29" is not just a poem about
disappointment and despair: it’s a poem about
the way that love comforts, soothes, and repairs
the many injuries that one endures in life. After
the poem’s bitter opening 8 lines, the speaker
reflects on the love he shares with his beloved
(traditionally believed to be a young man). That
love, he argues, offers compensation for all his
insults, slights, and misfortunes. In this way, the
poem draws an implied opposition between love
and the competitive hierarchies of wealth and
status. Love stands outside those pursuits, and,
with its intense pleasures and rewards, offers an
alternate path to happiness.
When the speaker experiences the despair and
self-doubt he describes in the poem’s first 8
lines, he thinks about the man he loves and his
mood transforms. Thinking about the young man,
he experiences something close to ecstasy: his
compares his mood to an exalted, almost
religious music that breaks free of the “sullen
earth” and rises to heaven itself. The speaker’s
love for the young man radically improves his
mood and his self-esteem. Love, here, not only
improves the speaker’s generally well-being, but
also offers a kind of compensation for the
misfortunes he has suffered. He may not have
the wealth or political standing he covets, but his
love offers him a different form of riches.
The speaker’s frequent use of economic and
political terms reinforces the idea of love itself as
a form of wealth. He notably describes himself as
“in disgrace with fortune,” envies those “rich in
hope,” and desires “that man’s scope” (that is,
his power, influence, or skill). Though not directly
describing money in these instances, this use of
language nonetheless suggests that an economic
and political preoccupation that runs throughout
the poem.
Furthermore, in the poem’s closing couplet, the
speaker directly describes the young man’s love
as a kind of “wealth”—a wealth which is so
satisfying that he wouldn’t give it up for
anything, even to be king of England. The line
echoes a complaint from earlier in the poem,
“Wishing me like to one more rich in hope.”
Though the speaker uses the word “rich”
metaphorically in the earlier line, the resonance
between “rich” and “wealth” suggests that he is
drawing a strong contrast between the kind of
wealth that love provides and money itself.
One might interpret this in several different
ways. On the one hand, the poem could
presenting love as something apolitical, divorced
from the consequential decisions that shape the
life of a state or a community. On the other
hand, the poem might suggest that love stands
as an alternative to the values that motivate
people in politics and business (i.e. desire for
money and power). Perhaps that alternative
serves to critique the limitations of those values,
suggesting another system of values altogether—
which does not breed despair and anxiety.
Literature is a term used to describe written and
sometimes spoken material. Derived from the Latin
word literature meaning "writing formed with letters,"
literature most commonly refers to works of the
creative imagination, including
poetry, drama,fiction, nonfiction, and in some
instances, journalism, and song.
What Is Literature?Simply put, literature represents
the culture and tradition of a language or a
people. The concept is difficult to precisely define,
though many have tried; it's clear that the
accepted definition of literature is constantly changing
and evolving.For many, the word literature suggests a
higher art form; merely putting words on a page
doesn't necessarily equate to creating literature.
A canon is the accepted body of works for a given
author. Some works of literature are considered
canonical, that is, culturally representative of a
particular genre (poetry, prose, or drama).