Subjects:
failure to marry and to have children is continued. A lesson is drawn from his apparent sadness in
listening to music. Music itself is concord and harmony, similar to that which reigns in the happy
household of father, child and mother, as if they were separate strings in music which reverberate
mutually. The young man is made sad by this harmony because he doesn’t submit to it. In effect
it admonishes him, telling him that, in dedicating himself to a single life he makes himself
By breaking down the sonnet into a close reading, the thematics can be better discussed
and simplified. Lines one and two first off present the question of, you are yourself like music to
listen to, so why respond to it sadly? Why is it that when there is music to listen to, you are
saddened by it? These questions pose the weird problematic idea of why a person who is so
framed as to appear perfect by the observer, rounded and harmonious as a piece of music, should
be made sad by listening to the music. Within lines three and four we are still posed b
. . .
what is also sweet and joyful. The message being conveyed in lines seven and eight is as a player, or singer, the
harmony is judgemently ruined, by attempting to play solo, or by mistaking the parts of the
melody or song. The youth is missing from the song
which, in his absence, tells him that he will be nothing if he remains single. Beginning
with the first quatrain, it addresses the aural discord the youth apparently hears in the music of
marriage. In return as a single man, such as the youth, you abuse the parts by not mending
them into a family, by way bearing children. Within the second quatrain, the rhyme of sounds with confounds
emphasizes on the way the youth’s attitude is to establishing a harmonious family of his own
confounds. The English sonnet is the simplest and most flexible within it’s three
quatrains of alternating rhyme (abab,cdcd,efef,gg), followed by an ending couplet. Sonnet 8 takes the form of an English sonnet, or the
Shakespearian sonnet. While the final couplet addresses the absence of the youth from the music
of marriage. The strings, in their mutual harmony, resemble a happy
family unit, illustrated in lines eleven and twelve. Quatrain three emphasizes on the youth being able to retain his own individuality in
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a family unit. This musical image continues with
the addition of the idea of marriage within the word “husband. The construction of
the first two lines in quatrain one, are consciously melodic with the repetition of “music music,
sweets sweets, and joy joy.
Essay's Topics
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