Sonnet 7

7

Lo, in the Orient when the gracious light

Lifts up his burning head, each under eye

Doth homage to this new appearing sight,

Serving with looks his sacred majesty;

And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,

Resembling strong youth in his middle age,

Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,

Attending on his golden pilgrimage:

But when from high-most pitch with weary car

Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,

The eyes, fore-duteous, now converted are

From his low tract, and look another way:

So thou, thyself out-going in thy noon,

Unlooked on diest, unless thou get a son.

General
Imagery linking sun and man is not unusual in WS - the obvious parallel is with R&J when Romeo sees Juliet at the balcony: 'It is the east and Juliet is the sun! /Arise fair sun and kill the envious moon' (2.2.2ff) and there are other examples as set out below. There has been some speculation on the links between Sonnet 7 and R&J, ‘but the direction of influence cannot be established.’(GBE)

Structure
The sonnet is structured around the key word 'look', which appears in all the elements - i.e each of the the three quatrains and then the couplet. Not only that, but it is in the latter half of each element, creating a setting/situation followed by how it is/is not perceived.

Sense
First quatrain
Behold, just as in the east the sun lifts its regal head and every inferior eye beneath it pays allegiance (kneels) to this new appearing sight, paying compliment with looks to its sacred majesty. i.e.: man stares downwards to avoid being dazzled by the rising sun.

1. Lo: behold (with play on low in line 12)
gracious light: regal, beneficent sun. The sun was considered king among the planets in the Ptolemaic system, in which the Earth was of course central. This from R&J: 'the worshipp'd sun / Peer'd forth the golden window of the east' (1.1.118-9)
2. under eye: (a) below (on the ground); (b) socially inferior (c) mortal eye (i.e. every creature which lives beneath the sun.) cf WT : Polixenes says: ‘I have eyes under my service’(4.2.35)

Second quatrain
And having climbed steeply across the sky, in its middle age (i.e. midday) resembling the vigour of youth, still those on earth adore its beauty, attending on its golden pilgrimage.
5. having: refers to the sun
steep-up: precipitous
heavenly hill: the hill of the heavens ( i.e. the sky).SB: 'The conjunction of the rising sun, religious language, and the climbing of a hill gives the whole poem vague, substantively unharnessed, but pervasive reference to the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ; the pun of ‘sun’ and son in line 14 is also obviously pertinent to Christ, but the Christian references never solidify, never add up to the sacrilegiously complimentary analogy they points towards; they do, however, give an air of solemnity and miraculousness to the equation the poem implies between the sun’s cyclical birth, death, and rebirth and human victory over mortality by procreation.’

Aristotle in his Rhetoric divided life into 3 ages, giving supremacy to the middle one – so middle age more to do with being in one’s prime as WS saw it: 'all the valuable qualities that youth and age divide between them are united in the prime of life, while all their excesses or defects are replaced by moderation and fitness. The body is in its prime from thirty to five-and-thirty; the mind about forty-nine.' Link to the full text is http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.html (for the study of ages go to Book 2, Parts 12-14). Horace takes this up in Ars Poetica and WS develops into the seven ages in Jacques' speech in AYLI.

6-10: Most relevant to this quatrain is Ovid Metamorphoses 15.247-9 (Golding): 'From that tyme growing strong and swift, he passeth foorth the space / Of youth: and also wearing out his middle age apace, / Through drooping ages steepye path he ronneth out his race.'
6. Resembling…age: At noon the sun retains its youthful vigour (SB)
7. still: (a) nevertheless; (b) continually
mortal looks adore: (a) mortal looks continue to adore (b) nevertheless mortal gazes adore. KDJ: adore conceals a play on ‘ore’, the source of gold.
8. attending: (a) watching (b) attending like servants

Third quatrain
But when from the apex, with tired chariot, it staggers from the day like someone old, those eyes, previously cast down because duteous, are now turned away from the sun’s low path and look elsewhere.
9. weary car: metonym for ‘weary sun’, car meaning chariot, the two coming together in R3: ‘The weary sun hath made a golden set, / And by the bright tract of his fiery car / Gives token of a goodly day tomorrow.’ (5.3.19-21)
10. reeleth: staggers
11. fore: before
converted: turned away – Booth: ‘however – an moreover – it simultaneously suggest a conversion from superstitious heathen fear to higher religion.’

Couplet
In the same way, the speaker says, the young man burning himself out in his prime, dies ignored, unless you sire a son.

13. JK finds line 13 very dense - ‘this is hardly glossable’ while SB: (a) so you, outlasting you prime (b) so you, at the moment when you surpass yourself (c) so you, yourself already at the point of departing (i.e. dying) at the moment of your prime (d) so you, yourself already in the process of going out (as a light goes out, extinguished) at the moment of your prime.
14. GBE: playing with idea of ‘sun’, which will arise anew as you set.

Links with other works by WS
1. R&J, 1.1.118-19
2. WT, 4.2.35
9. R3, 5.3.19-21