Sonnet · Fair Youth Sonnets

Sonnet 74

But be contented: when that fell arrest

Without all bail shall carry me away,

My life hath in this line some interest,

Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.

When thou reviewest this, thou dost review

The very part was consecrate to thee:

The earth can have but earth, which is his due;

My spirit is thine, the better part of me:

So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,

The prey of worms, my body being dead;

The coward conquest of a wretch’s knife,

Too base of thee to be remembered.

The worth of that is that which it contains,

And that is this, and this with thee remains.

What it's about

A dying speaker consoles his beloved by splitting himself in two: the body (worthless, temporary) and the spirit/verses (immortal, eternally present). Death takes only the lesser part. What lasts—his poetic soul—already belongs to the beloved and cannot be lost.

In plain English

Don't grieve when death comes for me. What matters is that my verses survive—they'll stay with you as a memorial. When you read these lines, you're reading the part of me I dedicated to you.

My body is just earth; the earth will take it back. But my spirit—the real, valuable part of me—belongs to you. So you're losing nothing but a corpse, food for worms. That's not worth your sorrow.

The only worth in my body is what it contains: these poems. And that's what endures. These words remain with you, always.

Lines that stick

  • My life hath in this line some interest
  • My spirit is thine, the better part of me
  • The worth of that is that which it contains, / And that is this, and this with thee remains

Themes

  • mortality
  • immortality through verse
  • spirit vs. body
  • love's eternity
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