Shakespeare Sonnet 29

One of Shakespeare's most emotionally devastating sonnets opens in pure despair: the speaker has fallen from favor, weeps alone, and curses his wretched fortune. Sleep abandons him. Heaven ignores his cries. He is, in every sense, alone in the world. But then comes the turn that has moved readers for four centuries. He thinks of his beloved. And suddenly the sun breaks through. The lark rising at dawn becomes his metaphor, singing hymns at heaven's gate. What transpires in those final lines is nothing less than a declaration that love transcends all worldly loss: he would not trade this memory for the wealth of kings. It is, in fourteen lines, the most intimate argument for love's redemptive power ever written.