So am I as the rich, whose blessed key
Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
The which he will not every hour survey,
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,
Since, seldom coming, in the long year set,
Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,
Or captain jewels in the carcanet.
So is the time that keeps you as my chest,
Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,
To make some special instant special blest,
By new unfolding his imprison’d pride. Blessed are you, whose worthiness gives scope, Being had, to triumph, being lack’d, to hope.
Sonnet 52 is one of
154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet
William Shakespeare. It is a member of the
Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Structure
Sonnet 52 is an English or Shakespearean
sonnet. It contains three
quatrains followed by a final rhyming
couplet. It follows the typical
rhyme scheme of the English sonnet, ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, and is composed in
iambic pentameter, a type of poetic
metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The twelfth line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:
× / × / × / × / × /
By new unfolding his imprison'd pride. (52.12)
The fourth line has a final extrametrical syllable or feminine ending (as does the second line). It also has its second ictus moved to the right (resulting in a four-position figure, × × / /, sometimes referred to as a minor ionic):
× / × × / / × / × / (×)
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure. (52.4)
The meter demands some variant pronunciations: the second line's "uplockèd", the seventh's "placèd", and the eighth's "jewels" all count as two syllables. In the fourteenth line, the first occurrence of "being" is one syllable, the second is two syllables.