Sonnet 29

Sonnet 29 is about the power of love, platonic or romantic, to lift a person out of the depths of depression. The speaker spends the first half of the poem describing a hopeless state with great detail, the better to contrast this seemingly unconquerable misery with the liberating effect of love. The tone and diction of the first half builds incrementally, and with each additional struggle the speaker presents adding to his feelings of despair, withdrawal, and anguish. However, before the speaker completely collapses, the poet uses a volta, or a dramatic rhetorical shift, to completely change the mood and import of the poem. Rather than succumbing to his depression, the speaker thinks of his love, which is enough to reverse even the most painful thoughts almost instantly, returning the speaker to a state of gratitude, joy, and peace. The poem’s grammar echoes this structure; it comprises one sentence with two clauses: a conditional clause that describes the speaker’s troubles and a main clause that describes the saving power of love.

The first quatrain is a litany of symptoms of depression and anxiety: The speaker details incredibly difficult moments of public shame, of being “in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes” (Line 1)—suffering humiliation because of damage to his reputation or his finances.