Sonnet30

**Go Back ** **  When to the sessions of sweet silent thought  **I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste. Then can I drown an eye unused to flow, For precious friends hit in death's dateless night, And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe, And moan th' expense of many a vanished sight, Then I can grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er The sad account of fore-bemoanéd moan Which I new pay as if not paid before But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restored, and sorrows end.  [Line 1]* 'sessions' - the sitting of a court. The court imagery is continued with 'summon up' in line 2. The court motif is used several times by Shakespeare - note //Othello// 3.3.140: "Keep leets and law days, and in session sit/With mediations lawful?" (Leets = court sessions). (http:\\www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/30detail.html)  [Line 4]* By replaying his 'old woes' over in his mind, the poet is wasting precious time that could be spent thinking more joyous thoughts. Hence 'my dear time's waste'.

[Line 7]* "love's long since cancell'd woe" is the sorrow the poet had once felt over the loss of his close friends; loss that has dulled over the years but now returns as he thinks of the past.

[Line 8]* Some scholars interpret this line to mean 'I lament the cost to me of many a lost sigh'. "'Sight' for 'sigh' was archaic by Shakespeare's time and seems only to have been used for the sake of rhyme (see OED). Sighing was considered deleterious to health; compare 2 Henry VI 3.2.61-3: 'blood-consuming sighs . . ./Look pale as primrose with blood-drinking sighs', and 47.4." (Blakemore Evans, 142). However, the ordinary word 'sight' also makes sense in this context; that is, the poet has lost many things that he has seen and loved.

[Line 13]* Shakespeare's first use of the term 'dear friend' in the Sonnet.

[Line 14]* His friend is as great as the sum of all the many things the poet sought but did not find. 