Sonnet notes 7

Sonnet 16, line 4: “more blessed than my barren rhyme”

In Sonnet 15, poetry was ready to fight a war with Time. Now it is no more than barren rhyme. How has this happened? Sonnet 16 starts with the word But. The poet is vacillating. “No,” he says, “don’t be satisfied with a painted counterfeit of yourself, something merely imitating a picture of you in Time, my inexpert pen.” Everything I said in that last poem was unworthy of you. You must have a child. Again? Are we back to that? Do we believe him? Sonnet 16 seems precarious. A relationship on the verge. In this second half of a double sonnet the poet takes back the self-assuredness of the first half. He cautiously retreats to his tired refrain of the previous fourteen sonnets. Or is it a test? Is he waiting for a reaction? Does the Young Man think his rhyme is barren?