Sonnet · Fair Youth Sonnets

Sonnet 30

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,

For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,

And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,

And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.

What it's about

The speaker spirals through memory and grief—past losses, dead friends, abandoned loves—until a single thought of the beloved friend stops the spiral cold. It's not that thinking of this person erases the past; it's that their presence makes sorrow stop mattering. The sonnet pivots on 'But if'—a turn from drowning in old pain to rescue.

In plain English

When I sit alone with my thoughts, I remember the past and feel the weight of everything I've lost or failed to get. Old griefs come rushing back, and I cry over wasted time. I weep for friends who've died, and for loves I've mourned and thought I'd finished mourning.

I go through my sorrows one by one, tallying them up like a debt I keep paying over and over. Each loss hits me fresh, as if I'm feeling it for the first time.

But then I think of you, and it all changes. Every loss is made whole again. My sorrow simply ends.

Lines that stick

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought / I summon up remembrance of things past
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, / All losses are restor'd and sorrows end

Themes

loss
memory
grief
friendship
consolation
time

Sonnet 30

What it's about

In plain English

Lines that stick

Themes

Tap any word to see it explained.