Great princes' favorites their fair leaves spread, But as the marigold at the sun's eye; Where I may not remove nor be removed. The sense of this unity threw a beauty over all external nature, giving it the appearance of being but "the seemly raiment of the poet's heart" (Sonnet 22). It annihilated death, as we see in the 30th and 31st Sonnets. It gave the poet strength to realize his independence, even to the point of declaring, in the language of Scripture, "I am that I am" (Sonnet 121); and enabled him to make the great affirmation in contempt of the boast of time-"I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee.” But whilst this sense of unity runs through the Sonnets as one of their principal secrets, the poet felt a disturbing presence, the presence of something which obscured his vision; a sense of something as if interposed between himself or his own spirit, and the universal spirit, or that which, adopting the happy phrase of Emerson, we may call the OverSoul. This interposed obstacle, standing in the way of the poet, is called in the 44th Sonnet the "dull substance of the flesh," and is no other than material nature, which stands, as it were, between the two spirits like a wall of separation. Hence it is called in the 36th Sonnet a "separable" (or separating) spite. The poet felt that he loved the spirit of nature, which flitted before his mind's eye as the spirit of Beauty; and he believed in the unity of his own with that spirit; while yet he realized something that disturbed his vision, which, as he tells us, in the 20th Sonnet, was "nothing to his purpose," calling it " an addition," which threw a veil over the otherwise feminine beauty of the spirit. This mysterious, and, to the poet's "purpose," this unnecessary " addition," appears everywhere in the Sonnets as a sort of foil to the spirit, but without adding beauty to it. It is everywhere an obstacle in the estimate of the poet. It is the "painted beauty" of the 21st Sonnet. Whatever beauty it has, it receives from the poet's heart, seeming like its raiment, Sonnet 22. The eye paints its beauty upon the table of the heart, Sonnet 24, yet the eye is said E to want a certain "cunning "- it "knows not the heart." This "dull substance" is what does not permit the "soul's thought" to stand "all naked" (Sonnet 26); and thus prevents the poet from dedicating his verse to the praise of love. It makes the "ghastly night" of the 27th Sonnet, and the "clouds," blotting heaven, of the 28th Sonnet; and the "basest clouds" of the 33d Sonnet, said to pass over the "celestial face" of the spirit. This was what compelled the poet to acknowledge that he and his love must be twain; while yet he felt that their undivided (or indivisible) loves were one, Sonnet 36. It was this fleshy substance that made the conflict between the eye and heart, as in the 46th Sonnet, and drew from the poet's heart the decision that to the eye belonged the outward part, while the heart's right claimed the inward love of heart. The same "dull substance" is the "beast" of the 50th Sonnet, which drew the poet away from his love, the spirit. This was what made the "winter" of the 56th Sonnet, in whose presence the poet tried to see a virtue, in that it made the summer's (or spirit's) welcome thrice more wished, more rare. It is the poet himself who felt, in the dull substance of the flesh, what he calls, in the 58th Sonnet, the "imprisoned ab sence" of liberty; but which, in a sublime spirit of resignation, he implores he may suffer in "patience," without accusing the higher spirit of injury. The "dull substance," the source of "impiety," is the "infection" with which the spirit was seen to live, moving the profoundest sigh of the poet, as in Sonnet 67; and yet a conscious sense of the presence of the spirit turned all defects to beauties, as may be seen in several of the Sonnets; for it is only in a true sense of the spirit that the obliquities of life find their true solution. 66 The "dull substance" is the canopy of the spirit of the 125th Sonnet, which the poet wished to throw aside, that he might live in that unity of the spirit, which is not mixed with seconds," and, in its own simple truth, "knows no art; " or, as expressed in the 78th Sonnet, it is the poet's "only art”—evidently that of truth and beauty, or "truth in beauty dy'd." Sonnets 54, 101. The object addressed in the Sonnets is essentially conceived as a unity, designated in the 1st Sonnet, by a figurative expression, as Beauty's Rose; but it is unavoidably realized as double, and is thence called, in the 20th Sonnet, the master-mistress of the poet's passion, or love; the master side, so to say, being the spirit, in which the unity is seen, while the " addition," or dull substance of the flesh, is regarded as the separating something which the poet struggles to lose sight of in the spirit. It appears, at times, clothed with the beauty of the spirit, and then, at another time, it wears a gloomy aspect-" as dark as night, as black as hell." Here are three, the spirit in man, the dull substance of the flesh, and the over-soul, "and these three are conceived as one," but with a disturbing sense of the body interposed, as it were, between the two spirits, where it stands like a wall of separation, the wall being now conceived of as the man, and then as the vestment of the universe itself-which, as we read, is to be rolled up like a scroll, etc., when God shall be all in all. This consummation does not appear in the Sonnets themselves, though, as a doctrine, it is everywhere implied by the poet's deep sense of the unity. It is mystically shown, however, in the ancient fable of Pyramus and Thisbe, as the reader is expected to see by the manner in which the poet uses that fable in the Interlude introduced in the closing Act of Midsummer-Night's Dream. It may not be amiss to remind the reader of the |