So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet-season’d showers are to the ground;
And for the peace of you I hold such strife
As ’twixt a miser and his wealth is found;
Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;
Now counting best to be with you alone,
Then better’d that the world may see my pleasure:
Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,
And by and by clean starved for a look;
Possessing or pursuing no delight,
Save what is had or must from you be took. Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day, Or gluttoning on all, or all away.
Sonnet 75 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.
Synopsis
The poet expresses his complete pleasure in the presence of his beloved, but says that his devotion resembles that of a miser to his money, filled with anxiety combined with pleasure in his wealth.
Structure
Sonnet 75 is an English or Shakespearean
sonnet. The English sonnet has three
quatrains, followed by a final rhyming
couplet. It follows the typical
rhyme scheme of the form, 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 4th line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:
× / × / × / × / × /
As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found. (75.4)
The 6th line exhibits two common variations: an initial reversal and a final extrametrical syllable or feminine ending:
/ × × / × / × / × / (×)
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure; (75.6)
Line 8 necessarily repeats the 6th line's feminine ending. Possible initial reversals also occur in lines 1, 2, 3, 9, 12, and 13; though these can be interpreted in other ways.
The meter demands a few variant pronunciations: in the 2nd line, "showers" functions as 1 syllable, and in the 10th line "starvèd" functions as 2.[2]