Meaning, Explanation and critical appreciation of Shakespeare's sonnet-1 "From Fairest Creatures We Desire Increase".
Text: William Shakespeare's Sonnet No.-1
From Fairest Creatures We Desire Increase
William Shakespeare
From Fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time deceased,
His tender heirmight bear his memory:
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And tender churl mak'st waste in niggarding:
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the World's due, by the grave and thee.
Meanings and Explanations:
Beauty's rose- Here 'rose' is used as a symbol of beauty.
The riper- the man who is becoming riper and riper; the man who is growing older and older.
By time- in course of time.
His tender heir- his little child who will one day succeed to his father's name and property.
Might bear his memory- might keep his memory alive.
Contracted- pledged;
Contracted to thine own bright eyes- committed to the worship of your own beauty. 'Bright Eyes' here refer to the beauty of the poet's friend. 'Contracted' implies that the friend has taken a promise to remain loyal to his own beauty, and not to make use of it for any worldly purpose. Perhaps the poet's friend is fully satisfied with his own beauty and does not believe in sharing it with anybody.
Self-substantial- sufficient in itself; not requiring anything additional or supplementary.
Herald- fore-runner, messenger
Gaudy- having a rich appeal
Tender- youthful
Churl- this word has been used to mean a miser
Niggarding- not spending even the minimum of what is needed.
Critical Appreciation:-
In this opening sonnet of the sequence, William Shakespeare urges his friend most probably the Earl of Southampton to get married in order to be able to have children of his own. The argument is very convincing what the give to his friend. We agree that a man should not live for himself but should rear a family. It is nature of all living beings to reproduce without being compelled to do so. As Shkespeare thought his friend to be one of the loveliest human beings, he wanted that the friend's beauty should not get lost altogether.
In this first sonnet, William Shakespeare has argued a case, so that it appeals more to our intelligence or our reason than to your feelings. It is one of the best of William Shakespeare's Sonnets, even though the argument has been developed in a logical manner with the conclusion coming in the final two lines. At the same time we should not forget that the beauty of his friend is as much a theme of this sonnet as the argument that the friend should get married and produce children.
Critical appreciation of the poem, "I Find No Peace".
As a Pioneer of sonnet dinner in England, he is very much influenced by Petrach and other Italian sonneteers. In this sonnet he also borrows the theme of unrequited love which was the typical theme of conventional petrarchan sonnet. The very title of the poem suggests this theme of love.
Not only in the matter of theme, but in structural construction, he is also owed to the Italian sonnet. He divided his poem into octave and sestet. But he deviates from Petrarch in one way, though in Petrarchan sonnet the subject matter is stated in the octave and developed in the sestet, Wyatt here represents the theme of love-lorn heart of a passionate lover althrough the poem. And here he also introduced the concept of coupler which foreshadows Shakespeare's concluding couplet.
“The beauty of the morning…glittering in the smokeless air”- Explain.
"He fathers forth whose beauty is past change" - comment.
Here 'He' suggests the God who has blessed us by giving this pied beauty of all things in this universe. God is the creator of the dappled things of the world. He produces the multi-coloured, multi-shaped, multi- natured things in this entire universe, but the beauty of God is eternal, He is beyond change, He himself is the pied beauty.
Here 'father' is used as a verb means 'to beget'; here it means 'to create'. The word 'forth' adds energy to the expression. 'Father, a common word has been used in its appropriate original sense. This shows Hopkins' complete command over the language. Actually God is the ultimate whose beauty knows no change. God is the "Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."(St. James I, 17). The poet's boundless faith in and devotion to God are all distinctly discernible here.
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments..."-Explain.
In the opening of sonnet 116, Shakespeare alludes to the Marriage service in the Book of Common Prayers and he refers to the marriage ritual. In the Christian Marriage ritual, before the union of the bride and the bridegroom, the marriage -priest enquires of the congregation about the probable impediment which anyone in the assemblage and might have had.
The sonnet eulogizes the lofty attributes of true love. True love does not permit any sort of obstruction or obstacle in the attachment of two lovers. The poet emphasizes the immutability of love that nothing can shake or change. True love can never be dominated by any situation. Time moves very fast and changes different elements, but love remains constant and devoted. In fact, it persists and shines, despite the swift flow of time.
"And every fair from fair sometimes declines"-Explain.
The poet means the beauty of every beautiful person or object decreases with time. No beautiful thing has a permanent lease of life. It is the law of Nature. The enduring charms of everything are sure to decline someday or other. Nothing exists eternally.Time with its ravages and the power of destructibility annihilates everything. Through this line the poet here establishes the natural fact of the process of decay that every natural phenomenon is subject to. This change occurs because of an accidental ill-luck or through the natural process inherent in all things.
"But thy eternal summer shall not fade."-Explain
The 'eternal summer' of the poet's friend who is 'the world's fresh ornament' is referred to here.
Here 'eternal summer' means the youthful beauty which is superior to the charm of the seasonal summer. The beauty of the poet's friend is not subject to mutability that characterizes all earthly things. It defies the onslaughts of all-devouring time. It will never fade, because it will be given an eternal lease of life by poet's lines. The youth's summer is not 'eternal' in itself, but only in so far as it is caught and preserved in Shakespeare's verse. The poet's friend is the fairest of all. Nothing can steal away his summer nor defile the sublimity that his friend is possessed of. His beauty is to continue eternally.
