Summary

The exhausted speaker hurries to bed after a long day of work. He is tired and eager for sleep. However, he soon starts a "journey in [his] head" that keeps him from sleeping (3). His thoughts travel to his beloved, whose remembered beauty shines so brightly that it illuminates the night. He concludes that he can find no rest because of his love.

Analysis

As with all the sonnets, this poem purports to be a love poem. Certainly, it is a poem about love and about the influence of romantic affection on one's private life. However, that does not mean that it is a simple expression of romantic desire. Indeed, almost all of Shakespeare’s sonnets contain some ambiguous elements that make them more nuanced approaches to love, eroticism, and its relationship with poetry.

In this poem, that twist occurs at the end. This is...