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Sonnet 146

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Sonnet 146 is well known for its deeply intriguing religious aspect, as it is one of Shakespeare’s religious sonnets and almost the only religious one. It is religious as its tone mentions its concern with heaven, asceticism and also the progress of the soul all through out the sonnet. The idea that the poet was trying to convey to his audience is that the body exists at the expense of the soul, so that adorning or worrying about its beauty can only be accomplished at the souls expense. The poem is an internal monologue, which makes it first person point of view. This helps the audience understand that he is talking to himself and whom he is talking about. This sonnet can also be referred to as mediation between the soul and the body …show more content…

The words poor and sinful are both negative. We can understand through this negative tone that the poet or the ‘earth’ in this sonnet is a bad place and we then link ‘sinful’ to ungodliness, which is what the whole poem is about.

Another example of metaphor used in this poem is found in the second quatrain; ‘fading mansion’ which is used the represent our body. This metaphor explains that our souls are slowly dying and becoming very dull and fading as we do not live our lives like we are suppose to, according to the poet.

In line 13 ‘so shalt thou feed on death’, gives us the audience a thought that we must constantly be thinking about death and also as a part of human nature we ponder about life. In other words, for this metaphor, we as humans feed on death, which in turns feeds on us.
‘Why so large a cost, having so short a lease’ this ‘lease’ refers to life, which is short as we as humans are not immortal. This metaphor asks why we as humans put so much effort into life when death comes so quickly.

Closing couplet:
The metaphor from the 3rd quatrain is continued and expanded in the closing couplet. It finishes from the 1st quatrain of the starving person within the mansion and then turns into irony of the idea that death feeds on humans. And in the last lines, ‘death’ and ‘dying’ are words used as imagery to describe and give us the final image of eternal life.

Shakespeare, with the use of vivid imagery,

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