Sonnet 29

 Sonnet  29

Q1 Q2 Q3 C	When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d, Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate; For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.	4 8 12 14
In Sonnet 29, the speaker finds himself in a state of emotional emptiness. Suffering from a lack of self-esteem, he looks enviously at those around him and even loses the joy he takes in his writing.  He becomes consumed with desires for wealth, opportunity, status, skill, and friends.  These desires remain unfulfilled, as do his cries to “deaf heaven.” At the volta—the classic thematic shift at line 9—the speaker turns his thoughts to the fair youth.  His perspective changes. His mood lightens. He is left with a sense of complete fulfillment at the remembrance of “thy sweet love.” In the bold final couplet, the speaker claims that he would not “change my state with kings.”  The speaker’s continual reference to the highs and lows of his “state” gives his plight a fickle tone, and suggests an ephemerality to the poem’s events.  All states are subject change, and so the speaker’s confident conclusion carries a sense of flimsiness. Indeed, the next sonnet brings a new set of sorrows, as does the one after.	—William Shakespeare

https://www.owleyes.org/text/sonnet-29#