His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,

And these shall live, and he in them still green.

It is comparatively a paltry view to suppose, in these Sonnets, that the poet was addressing a contemporary person, either male or female. His ideal, that which the poet contemplated as Beauty, or the Beautiful, was the object of his prayerful watchings, as expressed in the 27th and 61st Sonnets:

27. Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travail tir'd;
But then begins a journey in my head,

To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
For then my thoughts (from far where I abide)
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,

And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness, which the blind do see;

Save that my soul's imaginary sight

Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,

Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,

Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
Lo, thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,

For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.

61. Is it thy will, thy image should keep open
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?

Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
While shadows, like to thee, do mock my sight?
Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee
So far from home, into my deeds to pry?

To find out shames and idle hours in me,
The scope and tenour of thy jealousy?

O no! thy love, though much, is not so great;
It is my love that keeps mine eye awake;
Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,

To play the watchman ever for thy sake:

For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
From me far off, with others all too near.

In order to realize something of the nature of these two Sonnets, the reader has only to consider an instance of his own desire for the accomplishment of some darling purpose of a worldly character; and then let him imagine a change of object, and allow that while some men devote themselves, body and soul, to effect what may be called worldly objects, having reference to time, others, though few in number, like those. who enter the strait way, may equally devote themselves to the attainment of a certain object which, for convenience, may be called spiritual and eternal. This spiritual aspiration is what the poet, in the 61st Sonnet, calls his " own love,"

which compels him to "play the watchman,”— truly not unlike the fulfilment of the repeated injunctions of Scripture-to watch and pray always; we do not say, in precisely the sense of the Scripture command, yet not unlike it.

If after the interpretations we have given the opinion should still be persevered in, that the Sonnets under examination were addressed to some merely human person contemporary with the poet, we should be disposed to wonder how such a student is to be convinced that God is a Spirit, the Spirit of all-embracing life which knows no death; in the "heart" of which our poet sought to be obsequious (Sonnet 125), wherein he saw what was of more value in his eyes than "all this wide universe besides " (Sonnet 109), as shown in the following Sonnets:

29. When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,-and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd, such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

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 times' waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus'd 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 restored, and sorrows end.

31. Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,

Which I by lacking have supposed dead;

And there reigns love and all love's loving parts,
And all those friends which I thought buried.
How many a holy and obsequious tear

Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye,

As interest of the dead, which now appear

But things remov'd, that hidden in thee lie!
Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,
Who all their parts of me to thee did give;
That due of many now is thine alone:
Their images I lov'd I view in thee,

And thou (all they) hast all the all of me.

Can we not now, at least theoretically-and we do not feel bound to defend any man's doctrines of life-can we not now understand enough of the doctrines of the poet, to perceive, with deeply interesting appreciation, the general purpose of the Sonnets, and that, in some sort, they tell us of the poet's interior life in its joys and triumphs, and no less in its sorrows and trials? We are fully persuaded that we have nothing in profane literature, of the same extent, more deserving profound study than the Sonnets we have had under examination,

It is not denied but that many of them may easily be understood as applicable to ordinary life, even where a higher purpose was designed; but we are well assured that the general explanation applicable to most of them requires the supposition of a mystical object, called in the 1st Sonnet Beauty's