He then says:
‘Twas so ; but this, all pleasures fancies be ;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.
(Lines 5-7)
He is saying, yes, it was so, we were asleep, and if I ever did see beauty, which I wanted, and got, it was just a pale imitation of you.
When Donne talks about ‘beauty he did see’ he may be talking about cosmetic beauty, not like Shakespeare’s ‘true love’.
Stanza 2 line 1 says:
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
This is where the title comes from, Donne is showing this stanza is set in the present with ‘And Now’ at the beginning. In this line he is wishing good morning, welcome to their ‘waking souls’.
Line two says:
Which watch not one another out of fear;
He is saying that he and his lover don’t watch each other out of fear they watch one and other through their love for each other.
Lines 3 and 4 of stanza 2 say:
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
In these lines he is saying that love controls what you see, which means if one really loves someone one doesn’t see their faults. In line four he says it doesn’t matter where they are, even if its just a little room, it’s all they need, all they need is each other.
Lines 5 to 7 of stanza 2 say:
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone ;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown ;
Let us possess one world ; each hath one, and is one.
In these lines Donne compares him and his love to separate hemispheres (half worlds) that come together to make a complete world, a whole.
Stanza 3 line 1 shows intimacy between the couple, he looks into her eyes and sees himself, she looks to his and sees herself, the second line says that you can see love in someone’s face:
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest ;
In lines 3 and 4 of stanza 3 Donne asks where him and his love can find a better world where they don’t have a cold, sharp north (pole) or a ‘declining west’; the sun sets in the west, their love will never die, it will always be hot and bright.
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west?
In the final three lines Donne explains that as long as their love is equal, love will never fade or die:
Whatever dies, was not mix’d equally;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.
Sonnet 116
Shakespeare’s approach to love is very mature, he talks about ‘marriage of true minds’ on the fist line of the sonnet, this shows the sonnet may not be sexually attached, ‘true minds’ could be male or female, some even say some of his works were written for a male:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
I will not allow, Shakespeare says, that love does have faults, impediments. If it alters, it isn’t love.
O no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken
The love Shakespeare talks about is a beacon (a seamark or guide to sailors); it is a north star, it exceeds all narrow comprehension (its "worth's unknown"); its height alone (the sailors base for calculation) is good enough to guide us. He says it is never shaken by a tempest, or storm, it looks over it.
The forth quatrain is as follows:
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out ev'n to the edge of doom.
In this quatrain Shakespeare tells us that, even thought people get old and lose their rosy lips and cheeks and ‘He’, Death, will come love will come through, Love doesn’t alter with Death’s brief hours and weeks, meaning a week in Deaths time being a lifetime in ours, Love will bear out to the edge of doom.
The final rhyming quatrain is a very power full one:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Shakespeare is actually saying if what I have wrote is wrong, and you can prove it, then I never wrote it and no man has ever loved. This however is impossible and is ironic as you, the reader, have just read it so it has to be true.
Both poets tell us about love in their own way, some stronger than the other, But if you read Shakespeare’s sonnet he seems to be very sure on his views of love, if this is so, how much of the argument proceeds by means of negation: "let me not," "love is not," "O no," and so on.
Perhaps the Shakespeare is less confident than he appears to be.
Shakespeare has a tendency, as such, to end his sonnets in this way take sonnet 18 for example, it ends:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
He is saying here that, so long as men can breathe or eyes can see, you will be alive and you will never die. As I said earlier Shakespeare is sure about his views.
