Sonnet 14: “Me thinks I have Astronomy!”

Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck,

And yet me thinks I have Astronomy,

But not to tell of good, or evil luck,

Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality;

Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,

Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,

Or say with Princes if it shall go well

By oft predict that I in heaven find.

But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,

And, constant stars, in them I read such art

As truth and beauty shall together thrive

If from thy self, to store thou wouldst convert;

     Or else of thee this I prognosticate:

     hy end is Truth’s and Beauty’s doom and date.

“I find an odd mixture in this sonnet. Strangely beautiful, yet distant. It doesn’t have the same flow as earlier sonnets…

“The theme is unchanged in Sonnet 14, but the argument is different. We have to untwist the phrases to understand some of the lines (5, 7 and 8). Starting with line 3, we can read them this way to make sense:

But not to tell of good, or evil luck

Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality,

Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind;

Nor can I tell fortune to brief minutes,

Or say if it shall go well with Princes

By that [what] I in heaven find oft predict

“All this to lead up to the argument: ‘I read such knowledge in your eyes, those constant stars, (more constant than Astronomy) that I predict that truth and beauty will survive if you have a child and that if you don’t, your death will be their doom.’…

“I find the same reluctance in the rhythm of Sonnet 14 as I do in its convoluted syntax and its distant tone. [see discussion of meter] The same reluctance I heard in Sonnet 13. On first reading, Sonnet 14 seems to have returned to the more distant relationship of the earlier sonnets. But has it?”

—Shakespeare’s Sonnets Among His Private Friends, p.44-45 (publication date 10/1/21)