Shakespeare’s Lost Sonnets: A Restoration of the Runes
by Roy Neil Graves, Professor of English
The University of Tennessee at Martin

 The Edited Texts of the Runes in the 1609 Quarto: Sets X-XI, the “Perverse Mistress” Texts
Copyright © Roy Neil Graves 2003, All Rights Reserved

—Notes on Set X— 

          By introducing the infamous Dark Lady or Perverse Mistress, texts in Sets X and XI add new challenges and a puzzling dominant “character” (often prefigured earlier) to Q’s implicit dramatic interrelationships among poet/persona, friend/auditor, and “mistress”—the last a witty perversion of several centuries’ worth of idealized females who were good at making the poems of European males drip in drool. While various hints in the Runes point to wife Anne, daughter Susanna, Mistress Alchemy, or even granddaughter Elizabeth as prototype(s) for this odd “female”—and while there may even have been some other “real” Dark Lady—the Mistress, I’m sure, is essentially figurative, a conceit for Will’s own torturous contrivances, for the poems themselves and especially the “peer-verse” Runes: The Mistress is Q’s Mysteries. Such overlaid coterie puns as “ms(s.),” “mystery sighs,” “ms. duress,” “ms. distress,” “ms. dress,” “misty heiress,” and “mystery see ye” help in some measure to decode Will’s cryptic assertions, heavy with “her” voice. The “mysteries,” too, are in part the poet’s guttural and suppressed vocabulary, which we have to work hard to make audible (see the index).
          Though proving any theory about Q seems elusive, readers who broach the late Q poems reading “mistress” as “Q texts” will see how such a coterie insight opens up meaning and veers all the Q texts nearer sense. Commentaries elsewhere on this site show some ways the Mistress/Mysteries conceit works in given cases—and Sonnets 127ff. can hereafter be similarly reconstrued at will. Because close variants of Sonnets 138 (in this set) and 144 (in Set XI) had appeared in 1599 in The Passionate Pilgrim (see Booth 476) and because these two texts thread across the horizontal warp of both sets, it seems likely that Sets X and XI were unitary products of the 1590s, originating as entertainment for Southampton’s circle and others, the same “sugared sonnets” that we know were circulating “among [Will’s] private friends” before 1598 (see Harrison 1032).
          By 1606-09 when, I deduce, Will reworked these two sets to cap his Megasonnet scheme, he had come to make them serve the cycle as a perverse “vertical” couplet—a close that seemed, in his numbers box diagram, to “walk upon the ground” on two stemmy legs (see Sonnet 130.12) while showing a substantive “turn,” as a closing couplet might in a single text.
           Another purpose these couplet sets served in their new Q setting was to mask the homophile odor of the overt Sonnets (so unconventional for being love poems written mostly to a man) with good-old-boy misogyny and winking innuendoes about some shared, down-and-dirty mistress.
          The antithesis of light and lyric beauty, Will’s Mistress inhabits a siren’s world of darkness and is medial between poet and auditor. She is “that art that makes my heart to groan,” wounding both poet and auditor (see Sonnet 133.1-2). She is, or can be, “made,” though punningly she is also often a “hymn.” As a shared romancer, she toys with both Will’s and the friend’s affections, mistreats both by being temperamental and nearly impenetrable, and effectively holds both their futures and reputations in her manipulative hands. She is a creature of black (ink), though “in the old days” color would have been the norm; she is “c[o]unted”—fair or not—as women are (see Sonnet 127.1). Her voice is a “wiry concord that confounds the ear” (Sonnet 128.4). She is “ablest in proof and proofed, and very wo-” (Sonnet 129.11). Her “‘I’s” are nothing like the sun” (Sonnet 130.1), for printed “I’s” are straight and black, while the sun is round and bright (like an “O”). (Will’s gendered ambiguity about phallic “I’s” and pudendal “O’s” always defies reducibility.) Will’s “mystery sighs are nothing like this: One,” for everything in Q is multiple.
          A few details from particular texts may show how Will’s puns, especially about writing and printing, typically conflate “ms(s).” and “Mistress.” In Rune 135, “my Mysteries’ [printed] ‘I’s’ are rune-black” (1). “Two be so tickled they would change their state” (2) may (despite OED) allude to printing and the shift of “state” from ms. to book. “Made” (3) puns on “maid” while combining ideas of “madness” and “craftiness” that are echoed in “ravin[g]” (1) and madde (14). The “speaking” mistress is a product of the “[ink]well” (4, see 13). Will’s “heart / art” is to be imprisioned in “thy steel bosom’s word/ward”—suggesting “pen” and printing apparatus. “Water” (9) suggests ink, and “raine” puns again on “rune.” “Number” (10) can mean “verse text.” Line 11 puns “my art [merd], th’ ink(y) thought, a several plot,” suggesting divergent “story lines.” “Unjust” (12) varies what may be a printing term (see “justified text”) to suggest “irregular.” “Well” (13), a pudendal play befitting a “mistress,” puns on “inkwell.” And “Dis-pair” (14) puns on “separate two [texts]” and "hellish pair” (since Dis is the capital of Dante’s Hell). The “she-knot” (12) of the text, then, is the “mistress” text herself, crazy mystery-sighs with ink-black “I’s,” a creature merging in Will’s mind with the auditor/muse’s own features (6). The line-pun “Then in thin, umber [black lines] let me pass untold [i.e., unrecognized, metrically uncounted]” (10) restates the phrase “my Mysteries’ ‘I’s’ are raven black” (1).
          Rune 137—however one “ill-wrests the text—offers another specific example of rampant Mistress/Mysteries puns: The creature of 1-4 works best as an analogue and conceit for the text itself, which is both appealing and “not [created] fair” (1). Line 2 suggests perusing something on the page; “In proof” (3) suggests “in print”; and “ill-wresting” (14) suggests wrongly interpreting (OED). By reconstructing the sequestered part of the poet’s project, one of the “mysteries,” the auditor can “add to thy Will” (9), but if no champion embraces and “takes hold” (10), the work may be illusory (11). Puns such as “Whore keeps me” (7) and the ambiguous "she" (13) also suggest the perverse text. The last line puns, “Now this ill-wresting, world [or, ‘wrong interpretation whirled’]: Is G-rown [the G-line, the archaic ‘ge-’ in ‘gerowned’] forbade?” Such “row” plays echo the one in the famous line “My Mistress, when she walks, treads on the G-row end [i.e., end of line 7],” “…on thick rune (rown/round),” and “…on the ground [as in ‘ground bass,’ a running continuo line undergirding a melody]” (see Sonnet 130.12).
          Set X shows other features besides the “new” Mistress. Substantively, it houses the infamous Will-punning sonnets (Nos. 135-136), two texts that cut across the 14 runes, initiating their playful sestets. Some details are more technical or pictographic. The set’s last line, e.g., “goes wide” into the blank space at bottom right, punning “Be arty, nice, straight (Burden aye is straight), though th’ web, rude art (our ode-art), goes wide” (Sonnet 140.14). As if to balance this righthand deviancy, one “Anne” line “goes wide” to the left, concurrent with the puns “Ann did hence this slander ascertain…” and “Eying, did Hen see this slander?” (Sonnet 131.14). Horizontal acrostics insistent on the spread spell out IHTM (suggesting “Item”) and WIT, while interwoven verticals generate TT, TBTB (compare“To be, to be”), and MSW (compare Ms. 10, Set 10, reinforced with IO in Sonnets 136-139). The horizontal string IH TM TT B SWIT… (see acrostic wit, Rune 127) suggests “Aye Tom, T.T., be Swede (sweet)….” The ending …I TWOB suggests “Eye 2 up,” “Eye top,” “I tup.” The strings TW, TIO, TW all encode “two,” pointing inscrutably to various dualities in Q including the paired Sets X and XI, functioning coordinately.

             Rune 130
     (Fourth lines, Set X: Sonnets 127-140)

     And, Beauty, slandered with a bastard shame,
     The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
     Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust!
 4  (If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head)—
     Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel,
     Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain;
     But slave to slav’ry my sweet’st friend must be.
 8  Thou wilt? Restore to be my comfort still,
     To thy sweet Will making addition thus.
     Thus far, for love, my lovesuit sweet fulfill;
     Yet what the best is, take the worst to be.
12 Unlearnèd in the world’s false subtleties,
     Use power with power, and slay me not by art,
     The manner of my pity-wanting pain.
__________
     Glosses: 2) wiry concord = the “string music” of these lines; 5) Thou = You, my friend (see 7), ...my art (see 13); 6) ruth = compassion; 8) puns: You wilt...; rest oar (phallic); 9) Will puns on sexual desire; addition puns on numbers.

                         Rune 132
     (Sixth lines, Set X: Sonnet 127-140)

     Fairing the foul with art’s false borrowed face
     To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
     Past-reason hunted, and no sooner had.
 4  But no such roses see I in her cheeks:
     Thy face hath not the power; to make love groan
     Better becomes the gray cheeks of th’ East.
     And my next self thou harder hast engrossed,
 8  For thou art covetous, and he is kind.
     Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine—
     I fill it full with wills; and my will, one,
     Be anchored in the bay where all men ride.
12 Although she knows my days are past the best,
     Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside;
     Though not to love, yet love to tell me so.
__________
     Glosses: 3) Past-reason = Madness (identified with the Runes); 4) Q such is always a bawdy eyepun on “f--k”; her = past-reason’s (see 3); cheeks suggests “checks” = acrostic grids, deterrents; 7) my next self = a persona identified with the Sonnets (see 3, 10-11); 9) Not once: i.e., Over and over; 12) she suggests art (1, 13), thine eye (13), and past-reason (3); 13) heart puns routinely on art; 14) The line puns, e.g., “Th’ ‘O’ [i.e., round or rune]-knot to love, yet love total ms., O.”

                         Rune 134
     (Eighth lines, Set X: Sonnets 127-140)

     Beauty’s profaned (if not, lives in disgrace)
     At the woods’ boldness, by the blushing stand,
     On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
 4  Then (in the breath that from my mistress reeks,
     Although I swear it) to myself alone
     Doth half that glory—to the sober West
     A torment thrice, threefold thus to be crossed
 8  Under that bond that Him as fast doth bind,
     And in my Will no fair acceptance shine
     Among a number: One is reckoned none
     Whereto the judgment of my heart is tied
12 On both sides. Thus is simple truth suppressed,
     Is more. Then my o’er-pressed defense can bide
     No news, but health from their physicians know.
__________
    Glosses: 1) Beauty’s (Q But is) puns on “Butt is...”; 2) woods’ = crosses’; stand = raised platform, ambush; 3) taker = recipient (of torture), punning on “tacker” (tack = stain); 3-4) mad / Then puns on maiden; 6) Doth half = (Beauty) doth divide; that glory may be ironic; the West = Western world; 7) thus to be crossed suggests Christ’s Crucifixion between two thieves; 8) Him implies Christ; Him as puns on Ham[net] S.; 12) Thus puns “th’ huss” (suggesting “profaned” Beauty); 13) o’er-pressed is a printing pun (see suppressed in 12) that also suggests torture; 14) their suggests “defense’s” (i.e.,“ defenses’”) and may refer to the two “buffering” thieves at the Crucifixion (see both sides in 12).

                         Rune 135
     (Ninth lines, Set X: Sonnets 127-140)

     Therefore my mistress’ eyes are raven black;
     Two be so. Tickled, they would change their state,
     Made in pursuit, and in possession. So
 4  I love to hear her speak; yet (well I know—
     And, to be sure, that is not false, I swear)
     As those two mourning eyes become thy face,
     Prison my heart in thy steel bosom’s ward,
 8  The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take.
     The sea, all water, yet receives rain still;
     Then in the number let me pass untold.
     Why should my heart think that a several plot?
12 But wherefore says she not she is unjust,
     Let me excuse thee—ah, my love well knows—
     For if I should despair, I should grow mad.
__________
     Glosses: 1) puns: “There, fore” (i.e., frontally); mystery’s, mss.’; rune, raving; 2) Two be (Q to be)... pun on “To be...,” “Toby so ticked th’ eye”; 3) puns: Mad, Maiden, and Sue (i.e., Susanna, Will’s daughter); 4) well, a pudendal pun, suggests an inkwell (and black ink), Will, and “will” as sexual drive; 5) And puns on Anne; 6) become = merge with, flatter; 7) heart puns on art (see 11); 11) several echoes number (10) and the pun “dis-pair” (14) and, as an adj., suggests “severing,” i.e., cutting; 13) puns here echo those in 4; 14) dis-pair puns on “separate,” “divorce”; mad (Q madde) echoes Made in 3.

                      Rune 138
     (Twelfth lines, Set X: Sonnets 127-140)

     Sland’ring creation with a false esteem;
     Making dead wood more blest, then living lips;
     Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream—
 4  My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
     Thy black is fairest in my judgment’s place
     And suit; thy pity like in every part,
     Thou canst not then use rigor in my jail.
 8  So, hymn I loose, through my unkind abuse—
     One will of mine to make thy large Will more,
     That nothing me a something, sweet to thee,
     To put fair truth upon so foul a face
12 And age in love. Love’s not to have years told,
     That they elsewhere might dart, their injuries
     Mad slanderers by mad ears believèd be.
_________
     Glosses: 1) a false esteem puns, “a false S- [ass-]team,” suggesting Sonnets/Runes; 4) pun: “My Master S., W. H.[Hen.] S., he...,” suggesting Southampton; 6) pun: “lickin’ every part”; 7) my jail suggests “My Isle,” i.e., England; 8) hymn (Q him); 9) will (the first time) = intention, purpose; 11) foul puns on fowl, making the line suggest Greene’s pejorative epithet for Will, “upstart crow”; 13) they = years (in 12); their puns on “th’ ear”; 14) Mad slanderers echoes 1.

                         Rune 139
     (Thirteenth lines, Set X: Sonnets 127-140)

     Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,
     Since saucy Jacks so happy are in this;
     All this the world well knows, yet none knows well.
 4  And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare:
     In nothing art thou black, save in thy deeds.
     Then will I swear Beauty herself is black,
     And yet thou will’t; for I, being pent in thee,
 8  Hymn have I lost—thou hast both him and me.
     Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;
     Make but my name thy love, and love that still.
     In things right true my heart and eyes have erred;
12 Therefore I lie. With her (and she with me
     Yet) do not so. But sense I am ne’er slain
     That I may not be so, nor thou belied.
__________
     Glosses: 1) they/their refer to saucy Jacks (in 2), i.e., tearful upstarts, but with phallic innuendo; pun: Southy (i.e., Southampton); 2) puns: “sauce ejects,” “soppier”; 3) puns: awl (phallic), well (pudendal); 4) as rare puns, “ass, rear,” “ass or ear [bawdily suggestive]”; 5) nothing is a pudendal pun; black (see 1) suggests mourning garb; 6) will puns on Will (see well in 3; will’t in 7; me in 8; my name in 10); 7) for I is a phallic pun, “fore-‘I’”; 8) Hymn (Q Him) suggests Ham[net], Will’s dead son; 7-8) a rhymed couplet; 9) beseechers = petitioners, rhetoricians; 9-10) another rhymed couplet; 11) things right true (pun: “...rigid tear you”) is a phallic pun, suggesting “penises at right angles”; heart puns on hard, and eyes suggests testicles; 12) her points to Beauty (6), thy love (10); With her embeds the phallic pun “wither”; 13) sense (Q since) = perceive, detect; 14) I puns on eye, phallic “I”; belied puns on “bellied.”

—Notes on Set XI—

          This the second of the Perverse Mistress sets pairs with Set X to comprise a formal “couplet” close to Will’s grand design, Q’s Megasonnet; texts in Set XI (at the far right in that imaginative construct) effectively add “‘unstressed’ syllables” across the board, packing the structure full. Readers have long recognized that the last 28 sonnets in Q are somehow of a different order from the rest. (For my own speculations about the origin and dating of the two final sets and about how they fit into the overall scheme, click on this linke.) As a further terminal add-on to the predominant Dark Lady materials in Sets X-XI, the last two overt sonnets in the last set function visually on the spread as a “couplet” close, exhibiting a conventional shift of subject matter in textual units 13-14, and concurrently rounding off the whole of Q with a bit of allusive formality.
          In fact, the conventionally mythological materials about Cupid and Diana in Sonnets 153-154, which have been critically lamented as a lapse, exert a strong substantive influence on the 14 runes that emerge in Set XI, cutting across all the runic texts in strategic final positions. The magic of contextual significations—and especially of pre-positioned pronouns pointing downward to elements in the runic couplets—allows many thematic variations in Set XI, not all of them with a Cupid/Diana tinge. Runes 141 and 142, as examples, seem momentarily to erase the concept that Will’s “mistress” automatically means his “mysteries,” the Q texts, but do not shift firmly into mythological gear either. Overall, the “different” subject matter in Sonnets 153-154 has the practical effect on the set of generating variety, especially in what “she” can mean in the runes. In Rune 141, e.g., the “careful housewife” conceit dominates—perhaps a kenning for Will himself, running back and forth between Sonnets and Runes, as if between husband and lover. Still, the notion that “she” means “mistress/mysteries” is pervasive enough throughout Sets X-XI to serve as an assumed hypothesis for any reader unless contextual evidence in a given rune points in some other direction. The Cupid/Diana stuff, for one thing, triggers a good bit about “brands” as quills.
          Like the “couplet” pair 153-154, Sonnet 145—with its perversely tetrameter lines—also has across-the-board effects in Set XI, if only to add one shortened line to every rune. Rune 142 wittily butts a “stuttering” six-stressed line (Sonnet 146.2) up against one of these tetrameter lines to generate an ironic “regularity” in the linked lines, showing one of hundreds of instances where authorized “error” proves playfully functional. In this particular case, given the reiterated content “my sinful earth” (Sonnet 146.1-2, punning “err-theme”), one reads the “error” as a mea culpa in the medieval tradition—a reminder that only God, and certainly not Will, creates perfection.
          Sonnet 144 here has gone far toward defining received opinions about the “love triangle” in Shakespeare’s sonnets—poet, male friend, perverse mistress. Reading the text in the light of what we now know about the suppressed runes allows other ways to view the implicit dramatic situation that frames the Q texts.
          As usual, Will’s own self-imposed predicament seems to be the dominant subject of the set, if indeed it has one.
          Notable in the runes of this set are the “numbers” reference (to 28) in Rune 146.12 and the re-assertion in Rune 151 of the theme of immortality through verse.

                          Rune 143
     (Third lines, Set XI: Sonnets 141-154)

     But ’tis my heart that loves what th’ eye despise
     (O, but with mine compare thou thine own state!),
     Sets down her babe, and makes all swift dispatch:
 4  The better angel is a man right fair.
     To me that languished for her sake:
     “Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
     Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill?
 8  Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled?
     Do I not think on thee when I forgot
     To make me? Give the lie to my true sight
     Then, gentle cheater; urge not my amiss,
12 In act thy bed-vow broke, and new faith torn.”
     And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep
     While many nymphs that vowed, chaste life to keep.
_________
     Glosses: 1) pun: Butt, ’tis my heart, Bawdy’s my art; th’ eye (Q they); 3) her = my heart’s (see 1); 4) angel puns on angle (see right); 5) To me puns on Tome and on Tommy, likely Thomas Thorpe, Will’s printing agent; her (ambig.) = my heart’s, the babe’s (see 1, 3); 8) they = others (implied), punning on “th’ eye”; 10) make me suggests “mate myself”; lie suggests bedmate, slope (i.e., inclination); Q giue the puns on Judy, short for Judith, Will’s daughter; 11) gentle cheater = the poet’s heart or “hard” (pun: thin, genital seeder/cheater; 13) his has phallic overtones (see steep as “cause to angle up”); 13-14) a rhymed-couplet close (see half-rhymes in Rune 142.13-14, 144.13-14).

                         Rune 144
     (Fourth lines, Set XI: Sonnets 141-154)

     Who in despite of view is pleased to dote—
     And thou—shalt find it merits not reproving:
     In púrsuit of the thing she would have, stay
 4  The worser spirit—a woman colored ill
     But when she saw my woeful state
     Painting thy outward walls so costly gay
     Th’ uncertain, sickly appetite to please
 8  That censures falsely. What they see aright
     Am of myself, all tyrant for thy sake.
     And, swear that brightness doth not grace the day,
     Least guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove
12 In vowing new hate. After, new love—bearing
     In a cold valley-fountain of that ground—
     Came tripping by, but in her maiden hand.
__________
     Glosses: 1) Who in despite of view = Whoever, despite what is visible,...; 2) it (ambig.) = doting, what’s seen (see 1), this text; reproving puns on re-proofing; 3) stay = allow to remain as is, support; 4) colored ill = turned ill-tempered (pun: printed badly, in black ink); the pun “collared ill” adumbrates an ugly, uncomfortable contemporary ruff; 5) But = Only; state may suggest “condition of the ms.”; 8) they (punning “th’ eye” = people with such “appetites”; 11) prove echoes reproving in 2 and suggests “proof”; 12) bearing = moving, extending; 13) a cold...ground suggests “a fault” (see 11) in the poet’s textual ground, playing on groan and “round/rune”; 14) maiden hand suggests a schoolgirl script, with but...hand punning, e.g., “butt in her midden [i.e., dunghill] handy.”

                         Rune 147
     (Seventh lines, Set XI: Sonnets 141-154)

     Nor taste nor smell desire to be invited
     And sealed, false bonds of love, as oft as mine
     To follow that which flies before her face
 4  And would corrupt my saint. To be a devil
     Was used in giving gentle dome:
     “Shall worms, inheritors of this excess...?”
     Hath left me, and I, disparate, now approve
 8  If it be not. Then love doth well denote,
      Nay? If thou lowerest on me, do I not spend?
     There is such strength and warrantise of skill,
     My soul doth tell my body that he may;
12 For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee:
     And grew a seething bath which yet men prove,
     And so, the General of hot desire.
__________
     Glosses: 3) her = my saint’s (see 4); 4) And puns routinely on Anne (see 2, 13-14), linked with “Hath.-puns”; 5) used (Q vfde) puns on vice, wifed, whiffed, viz.’d (i.e., cited as an example); 7) pun: “Hath. left me, Anne died, I, ...speare, Hate. now approve”; 8) well suggests inkwell, the pudendum; 9) lowerest, also lourest (i.e., frown, scowl); spend = expend, produce; 10) There is puns, “T' Harry S.,” i.e., Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton; warrantise = sanction, authorization; 12-14) family namepuns: Hall, Anne, Witch, Sue, “Hath-witch, “Hathaway see hide, my Anne” (with puns on Goneril and “Southy”).

                         Rune 148
     (Eighth lines, Set XI: Sonnets 141-154)

     To any, sensual feast with thee alone
     Robbed others’ beds’ revénues of their rents.
     Not prizing her poor infant’s discontent,
 4  Wooing his purity with her foul pride
     And, taught it, th’ hussy knew to greet,
     Eat up thy charge. Is this thy body’s end?
     Desire is death, which physic did except.
 8  Love’s eye is not so true as all men’s. Know
     Revenge upon my self with present moan,
     That in my mind thy worst all best exceeds.
     Triumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason,
12 And all my honest faith in thee is lost
     Against strange maladies. A sovereign cure
     Was sleeping, by a virgin hand disarmed.
__________
     Glosses: 1) To any, sensual feast puns, “To Annie S.,” “Two, Annie S. and Sue Hall, see...”; 4) his is phallically suggestive; with her puns on wither; 5) puns: “Anne-twat ate thus”; “taut-‘I’”; “totted”; th’ hussy knew (Q thus a new); 6) Eat = Ate; charge = discharge, child; end = goal, death; 7) physic = medicine; 8) eye puns on “I,” and all men puns on “‘awl’-men” (phallic); as all men’s puns, “eye S. Hall mense (...men, see...)”; 10) That = You who; 11) stays = supports, awaits; 13) cure puns on curate; 13-14) A...cure / Was sleeping = Sleep used to be a...cure; a virgin hand puns, “a virgin Anne”; disarmed is an eyepun on deformed.

                         Rune 151
     (Eleventh lines, Set XI: Sonnets 141-154)

     Who leaves unswayed, the likeness of a man,
     Root pity in thy heart. That, when it grows—
     But if thou catch thy hope—turn back to me;
 4  But being both from me, both to each friend,
     Doth follow night. Who like a fiend
     Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross,
     My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are!
 8  No marvel, then, though I mistake my view
     When all my best doth worship thy defect,
     O, though I love what others do abhor,
     He is contented thy poor drudge to be,
12 And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness.
     I, sick withal, the help of bath desired,
     Growing a bath and healthful remedy.
_________
     Glosses: 1) pun: You who didn’t inspire pages of verse...; 2) That = pity; 3) But = Only; 4) both (the first time) = you and your pity; both (the second time) = you and I; 5) night puns on Knight; 10) puns: eye, pudendal or anal “O,” phallic “I”; 11) He suggests night, friend (see 4-5), my best (see 9); 12) puns: to (twice) = two (eyes); eyes = ayes; 13) I puns on Eye; 14) Growing echoes leaves (1), Root, grows (2); bath and...remedy allude to “your pity” (see 2).

                         Rune 152
     (Twelfth lines, Set XI: Sonnets 141-154)

     Thy proud heart’s slave and vassal, wretch-to-be,
     Thy pity may deserve. To pitied be
     And play the mother’s part, kiss me, be kind.
 4  I guess one angel in another’s hell
     From heaven to hell is flown away,
     Within be fed, without be rich no more,
     At random from the truth, vainly expressed.
 8  The sun itself sees not, till heaven clears.
     Commanded by the motion of thine eyes,
     With others thou shouldst not abhor my state;
     To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side,
12 Or made them swear against the thing they see
     And thither hide: A sad, distempered guest
     For men diseased, but I my mistress thrall.
__________
     Glosses:1-2) a rhymed couplet (see also Rune 150); 7) At random (Q randon) = At great speed, without fixed principle; 10) puns: “oathers,” i.e., oath-bound coterie members; “knot,” i.e., riddle; “ms. state”; 11) thy side puns on “this hide” (see 13); 12) them = thine eyes (see 9); puns: “O’er, my dead Ham S. were...”; “hymn Sue ‘ear’ against ‘the thing’”; “the thin Judy see”; 12-13) pun: “...eye in jet [i.e., see in black ink] heavy / Anne....”13) guest suggests gift, gust; 14) but = only; mistress suggests mss., mysteries.

                          Rune 154
     (Fourteenth lines, Set XI: Sonnets 141-154)

     That “she” that makes me sin, awards me pain,
     By self-example may’st thou be denied
     If thou turn back and my loud crying still
 4  Till my bad angel fire my good one out
     And—saved my life, saying “Not you,”
     And death once dead—there’s no more dying then.
     Who art as black as hell, as dark as night
 8  Lest eyes, well seeing, thy foul faults should find,
     Those that can see, thou lov’st; and I am blind—
     More worthy I to be beloved of thee,
     Her love, for whose dear love I rise, and fall
12 To swear against the truth so foul a lie.
     Where Cupid got new fire, my mistress’ eye,
     Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.
__________
     Glosses: 8) Lest puns on Least and “Leaf’d” (i.e., put on leaves, pages); well puns on inkwell, pudendum, Will; 10) I puns on eye; 13) my mistress’ eye (a pudendal play) puns on “my mystery-sigh”; 13-14) puns: e.g., “my mysteries, aye / low (...allow), suffer, hate...”; “I, low, serrate Sue aye...” ; 14) water suggests the poet’s tears or ink; puns: ...snot allow (etc.).