O, how thy worth with manners may I sing,
When thou art all the better part of me?
What can mine own praise to mine own self bring,
And what is’t but mine own when I praise thee?
Even for this, let us divided live,
And our dear love lose name of single one,
That by this separation I may give
That due to thee which thou deserv’st alone.
O absence, what a torment wouldst thou prove,
Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave
To entertain the time with thoughts of love,
Which time and thoughts so sweetly dost deceive, And that thou teachest how to make one twain By praising him here who doth hence remain!
Sonnet 39 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.
Sonnet 39 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet, composed of three quatrains and a final rhyming couplet for a total of fourteen lines. It follows the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. It is written in iambic pentameter, a metre based on five pairs of syllables accented weak/strong. The second line is one example of a line of regular iambic pentameter:
× / × / × / × / × /
O, how thy worth with manners may I sing
The fifth line can be scanned with an initial reversal:
/ × × / x / × / × /
Even for this, let us divided live, (39.5)
Themes[]
Sonnet 39 continues with sonnets 35–37 the theme of the poet and the young man being united in love as one person and the suggestion of being separated (twain): “How can I praise you properly when we are so combined? I would be praising, in a sense, myself.” The poet suggests that a separation will help him praise the young man while thinking of his admirable aspects in absence. Beginning with line 9 the poet addresses not the youth, but “absence”: “Oh absence, you would be torment, except that you provide a pleasant opportunity to think on love, and, absence, you teach one to be not solitary but to be two, by praising the young man where I am, though he continues to be elsewhere (hence).”[2]
Rollins, Hyder Edward, ed. (1944). A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: The Sonnets [2 Volumes]. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. OCLC6028485.
Modern critical editions
Atkins, Carl D., ed. (2007). Shakespeare's Sonnets: With Three Hundred Years of Commentary. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN978-0-8386-4163-7. OCLC86090499.
Booth, Stephen, ed. (2000) [1st ed. 1977]. Shakespeare's Sonnets (Rev. ed.). New Haven: Yale Nota Bene. ISBN0-300-01959-9. OCLC2968040.
Burrow, Colin, ed. (2002). The Complete Sonnets and Poems. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0192819338. OCLC48532938.
Duncan-Jones, Katherine, ed. (2010) [1st ed. 1997]. Shakespeare's Sonnets. The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series (Rev. ed.). London: Bloomsbury. ISBN978-1-4080-1797-5. OCLC755065951.
Evans, G. Blakemore, ed. (1996). The Sonnets. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-0521294034. OCLC32272082.
Kerrigan, John, ed. (1995) [1st ed. 1986]. The Sonnets ; and, A Lover's Complaint. New Penguin Shakespeare (Rev. ed.). Penguin Books. ISBN0-14-070732-8. OCLC15018446.
Mowat, Barbara A.; Werstine, Paul, eds. (2006). Shakespeare's Sonnets & Poems. Folger Shakespeare Library. New York: Washington Square Press. ISBN978-0743273282. OCLC64594469.
Orgel, Stephen, ed. (2001). The Sonnets. The Pelican Shakespeare (Rev. ed.). New York: Penguin Books. ISBN978-0140714531. OCLC46683809.
Vendler, Helen, ed. (1997). The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN0-674-63712-7. OCLC36806589.
