Lo! in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty;
And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage:
But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,
Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,
The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are
From his low tract, and look another way:
So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon
Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son.
SONNET INDEX
Mnemonic Image: The SUN
Memory Passage: Beauty's ROSE in a World War I TRENCH is reflected in a GLASS also showing the face of the EXECUTOR, Death, who admires the FRAME of Bone which holds the mirror, adjusting it to catch the SUN
Idiosyncratic Abstract: A cartoon SUN awakens in the morning, chugs his chariot up the Heavenly Hill and then at Highmost Pitch, like a Windhover, falls down with a beautiful fire while his idiot worshipers avert their eyes as Emily Dickinson walks quietly amongst them in the evening light, slicing out their eyeballs with a straight razor.
Couplet Imagery: As you are like a sun, you will soon die, forgotten in your night, unless you breed and create a son.
So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon
Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son.
The Sun's daily journey across the heavens as an extended metaphor / conceit of the life of the Young Man. As the sun sets into night, no more to be gazed upon, in effect dying to be reborn again the next morning, so the Young Man, whose life is over at end of day, will no more be seen, unless he reproduces a son in his image.
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| Phoebus Apollo in his Chariot - source |
As far as memorization goes, the vehicle narrative of the metaphor is a great help. Q1 the sun rises from the east, Q2 the sun climbs to mid-day, noon, Q3 the sun begin to fall into the west, setting. Other mnemonic aides are related to Vendler's Key Word theory: the word look appears in each of the quatrains and the couplet: looks, looks, look, unlooked. I'm not entirely in the boat with her about the Key Words, but in this particular sonnet, it works perfectly.
Vendler: Sonnet 7 has little to recommend it, imaginatively; both the conceit of the sun's predictable day-long-jour-ney (another French pun) and the conceit of the fall of favorites from public respect are well-worn topics. It was perhaps because his topics were so entirely conventional that Shakespeare looked to word-games to put him on his mettle on composing the poems. He certainly enjoyed the obstacle of shaping his four parts around a single Key Word enough to propose it to himself many later times.
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| The Sun in his Chariot - source |
I fancifully imagine Vendler's Shakespeare composing the sonnet, knowing he wants to employ Pythagoras' metaphor of change from Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book XV (see below) and reference Erasmus' adage:
Plures adorant solem orientem quam occidentem.
More men adore the rising than the setting sun.
He chooses to set the Key Word in the later half of each quatrain and the couplet. The sun acts in the first half, the lowly human servants / worshipers react: look in the second half. He also wants to use words that contain the letters age, old and, perhaps, or (French "gold" :: golden sun)
homage / age / pilgrimage
golden
orient / adore / mortal / fore
He thinks it would be clever and slightly devious if the entire sonnet could build tension by not using the word sun until the last moment, where it sounds as a ringing pun of relief.
Also, it would be amusing to also begin with a pun: the sun rising from low in the east, announcing the sonnet with Lo, as in Behold!
And for the first quatrain, before everything gets set in stone and restrictive, the ending rhymes will be a little play in themselves: light >> eye >> sight >> majesty. The sun's dawning light gives energy to the Elizabethan eyebeams which shoot out like Superman's heat ray to perceive the majesty of the sun.
Finally (Booth), he wants there to be a subversive shadow analogy of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. I also enjoy entertaining the idea of Shakespeare addressing the sonnet to the Old Testament Yahweh, blasphemously urging him to bring about the events of Jesus's birth or end up as a nonsensical Nietzsche quote. Towards this end, he'll slip in a handful religious words: gracious, homage, sacred, heavenly, adore, pilgrimage, converted.
There you go: the sonnet pretty much will write itself now! Just fill in the blanks. Reminded here of the spurious Debussy / Mozart / Miles Davis quote:
The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between them.
Oh and it would be nifty to begin with a trochee iamb with an unusual caesura that breaks after orient. Begin the second quatrain with the same trochee iamb but with a usual caesura. And emphasize the uphill climb in line by slowing the line with a triple beat of a medial iamb-spondee. Then speed up the sun's decline with two unstressed beats following the double stress in the medial iamb-trochee. Otherwise, iambic pentameter all the way through. (See Shakespeare's Sonnets: With Three Hundred Years of Commentary)
1 Lo! light
2 eye
3 sight ] SUN RISING
4 looks majesty
5
6
7 looks ] SUN AT NOON
8
9
10
11 ] SUN SETTING
12 look
13
14 Unlooked SON
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| Angry Jesus - Sun God - source |
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| Flipped Flammarion, 1888 - source |
Lo! in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty;
So we begin low and behold. Imagine that Lucky Old Sun got nothing to do but roll around heaven all day. The archetypal image of the sun with a human face. A cartoon sun maybe, waking up from the good night's sleep, yawing and stretching out his rays in the east / orient. Lifts up his burning head smiling down on his grateful subjects as the King of the World, the Great Bringer of Light. (Shadow: Lucifer) The Sun's eyes are bright rays of fiery light. His subjects / servants eyes are under, paying homage (the original use of the word denoted the ceremony by which a vassal declared himself to be his lord's “man”) by looking, gazing upon, the sacred godlike and royal majesty. (Compare with S2 L3 and S5 L2.)
And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage:
The Sun now in his fiery golden chariot making his golden pilgrimage. Note the old age hiding in there. Also the rhymes of Q2 thudding in the ear: hill / still || age / pilgrimage. Still age, still age, the relentless train chugging along with the chariot huffing and puffing up the hill. I think I can. I think I can. Still age still age still age. I love how the tongue has to hoist itself up over the metrical steps of steep-up heavenly hill. There's that sweet triple beat of the medial iamb-spondee. Also note the internal rhyme of mortal and adore, sounding out that golden or that makes Helen Vendler so ingeniously happy.
Some illogic is starting to present itself. It's in the Yet. Here's the Great Sun God / King resembling not a middle aged man, but a strong youth. Yet... the lowly mortals still adore him. Why wouldn't they? There is a note of subtext perhaps addressed to the Young Man: you've got a few years before you are middle aged, and even then you will be adored - but only because you will still resemble a strong youth, even though you are past your prime.
But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,
Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,
The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are
From his low tract, and look another way:
The first two lines of this sonnet always make me smile. I always enjoy arriving here in the recitation. Kerrigan gives the optimal image: "a pitch is the height to which a falcon flies before it stops". Mnemonic resonance with Hopkin's Windhover:
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
Helios in his chariot car, after having chugged like a roller coaster train up to the utmost point, weary and haggard with exhaustion, like feeble age, reeleth from the day. How many rough long endless days have I recalled that phrase, hoping to have a billion times lovlier, more dangerous fire break from me then! Here is where the sun is most beautiful in my mind. It is in the declining moments of the day when most people gather to watch the sun. So the next two line just don't make sense. I figure Shakespeare is trying to make the conceit work towards his purposes, taking heart in Erasmus. So I always silently curse the fools who were once duteous and convert from the sun's beautiful lovelier more dangerous falling low tract and look another way. Perhaps, they are gazing into the black mirrors of their phones. But I never identify with them. And here is where the sonnet loses me and any force of argument. Emily Dickson is my anodyne to Sonnet 7 - Those Evenings of the Brain:
We grow accustomed to the Dark -
When light is put away -
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye -
A Moment - We uncertain step
For newness of the night -
Then - fit our Vision to the Dark -
And meet the Road - erect -
And so of larger - Darknesses -
Those Evenings of the Brain -
When not a Moon disclose a sign -
Or Star - come out - within -
The Bravest - grope a little -
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead -
But as they learn to see -
Either the Darkness alters -
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight -
And Life steps almost straight.
***
So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon
Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son.
It isn't until the couplet that the Young Man is brought into the sonnet. Indicative perhaps that this sonnet is more of a mechanical conceit, not so much from the heart here. So thou... you my close Young Friend are at your own private High Noon, your highmost pitch. The Poet knows how to hook his Narcissistic attention by telling him he will be Unlooked on. That self-defining gaze of the other will be gone and the Young Man will die, unless he gets a son. There's a loony scifi image of the Young Man flying off into space and using an alien mega-structure that can harness a star and thereby getting a sun. Or something Hindu perhaps.
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| Chariot of the Sun God - source |
Euripides: Old age: a voice, a shadow, and no more.
Per Booth and Kerrigan, I have added the long passage from Ovid's Metamorphoses XV:
Al things doo chaunge. But nothing sure dooth perrish. This same spright
Dooth fleete, and fisking heere and there dooth swiftly take his flyght
From one place to another place, and entreth every wyght,
Removing out of man to beast, and out of beast to man.
But yit it never perrisheth nor never perrish can.
And even as supple wax with ease receyveth fygures straunge,
And keepes not ay one shape, ne bydes assured ay from chaunge,
And yit continueth alwayes wax in substaunce: so I say
The soule is ay the selfsame thing it was and yit astray
It fleeteth into sundry shapes. Therfore lest Godlynesse
Bee vanquisht by outragious lust of belly beastlynesse,
Forbeare (I speake by prophesie) your kinsfolkes ghostes to chace
By slaughter: neyther nourish blood with blood in any cace.
And sith on open sea the wynds doo blow my sayles apace,
In all the world there is not that that standeth at a stay.
Things eb and flow: and every shape is made to passe away.
The tyme itself continually is fleeting like a brooke.
For neyther brooke nor lyghtsomme tyme can tarrye still. But looke
As every wave dryves other foorth, and that that commes behynd
Bothe thrusteth and is thrust itself: even so the tymes by kynd
Doo fly and follow bothe at once, and evermore renew.
For that that was before is left, and streyght there dooth ensew
Anoother that was never erst. Eche twincling of an eye
Dooth chaunge. Wee see that after day commes nyght and darks the sky,
And after nyght the lyghtsum Sunne succeedeth orderly.
Like colour is not in the heaven when all things weery lye
At midnyght sound asleepe, as when the daystarre cleere and bryght
Commes foorth uppon his milkwhyght steede. Ageine in other plyght
The Morning, Pallants daughter fayre, the messenger of lyght
Delivereth into Phebus handes the world of cleerer hew.
The circle also of the sonne what tyme it ryseth new
And when it setteth, looketh red, but when it mounts most hye,
Then lookes it whyght, bycause that there the nature of the skye
Is better, and from filthye drosse of earth dooth further flye.
The image also of the Moone that shyneth ay by nyght,
Is never of one quantitie. For that that giveth lyght
Today, is lesser than the next that followeth, till the full.
And then contrarywyse eche day her lyght away dooth pull.
What? Seest thou not how that the yeere as representing playne
The age of man, departes itself in quarters fowre? First bayne
And tender in the spring it is, even like a sucking babe.
Then greene, and voyd of strength, and lush, and foggye, is the blade,
And cheeres the husbandman with hope. Then all things florish gay.
The earth with flowres of sundry hew then seemeth for to play,
And vertue small or none to herbes there dooth as yit belong.
The yeere from springtyde passing foorth to sommer, wexeth strong,
Becommeth lyke a lusty youth. For in our lyfe through out
There is no tyme more plentifull, more lusty, hote and stout.
Then followeth Harvest when the heate of youth growes sumwhat cold,
Rype, meeld, disposed meane betwixt a yoongman and an old,
And sumwhat sprent with grayish heare. Then ugly winter last
Like age steales on with trembling steppes, all bald, or overcast
With shirle thinne heare as whyght as snowe. Our bodies also ay
Doo alter still from tyme to tyme, and never stand at stay.
Wee shall not bee the same wee were today or yisterday.
The day hath beene wee were but seede and only hope of men,
And in our moothers womb wee had our dwelling place as then:
Dame Nature put to conning hand and suffred not that wee
Within our moothers streyned womb should ay distressed bee,
But brought us out to aire, and from our prison set us free.
The chyld newborne lyes voyd of strength. Within a season tho
He wexing fowerfooted lernes like savage beastes to go.
Then sumwhat foltring, and as yit not firme of foote, he standes
By getting sumwhat for to helpe his sinewes in his handes.
From that tyme growing strong and swift, he passeth foorth the space
Of youth: and also wearing out his middle age apace,
Through drooping ages steepye path he ronneth out his race.
This age dooth undermyne the strength of former yeares, and throwes
It downe. Which thing old Milo by example playnely showes.
For when he sawe those armes of his (which heeretofore had beene
As strong as ever Hercules in woorking deadly teene
Of biggest beastes) hang flapping downe, and nought but empty skin,
He wept. And Helen when shee saw her aged wrincles in
A glasse wept also: musing in herself what men had seene,
That by two noble princes sonnes shee twyce had ravisht beene.
Thou tyme the eater up of things, and age of spyghtfull teene,
Destroy all things. And when that long continuance hath them bit,
You leysurely by lingring death consume them every whit.
(Golding's Translation)
SONNET INDEX
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