Sonnet 23

The perfect ceremony of love's rite,

And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,

O'ercharged with burden of mine own love's might. It is a proverb coined by the persona and it somewhat negates his inadequacy.

The persona here compares him to the characters beckoned in Q1. Q3, in hinting at the beloved's preference for a rival poet, tongue that more hath more expressed, ascribes the tongue-tiedness of the speaker to his new perception of the debased judgment exercised by the beloved. Another aspect worthy of note is the way the phrase mine own love's has been used repeatedly; in line 7 the persona speaks of the decay of his love and in the very next line he speaks of its strength. Furthermore, the verbal parallelism of the octet is replaced by an irregular line-motion as the persona's agitation achieves full force. It has a sense of pride and provides a perfect end to the poem. While the octet speaks of the persona's tongue-tiedness, the sestet is a plea to his beloved to understand the depth of his love. 'O, let my books be then the eloquence / And dumb presagers of my speaking breast…' the persona here wishes that his writing be the silent and truthful foreteller of all the love in his heart. In a passage such as this, the distance between the composing author and the fictive speaker almost vanishes, as it is very easy to imagine that Shakespeare, a master of expression, would tell himself that a perfect ceremony of love could be invented.

The sestet ends with the frustrating speechlessness of the lover finding a way of talking, by deviating into the third person in the final line: To hear with eyes belongs to loves fine wit.