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Sonnet 33 Summary & Analysis
by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 33 Summary & Analysis
by William Shakespeare

  • Intro
  • Summary
  • Themes
  • Line-by-Line
    Explanations
  • Poetic
    Devices
  • Vocabulary &
    References
  • Form, Meter, &
    Rhyme Scheme
  • Speaker
  • Setting
  • Context
  • Resources
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The Full Text of “Sonnet 33: Full many a glorious morning have I seen”

1Full many a glorious morning have I seen

2Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,

3Kissing with golden face the meadows green,

4Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;

5Anon permit the basest clouds to ride

6With ugly rack on his celestial face,

7And from the forlorn world his visage hide,

8Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace.

9Even so my sun one early morn did shine

10With all-triumphant splendour on my brow;

11But out, alack! he was but one hour mine,

12The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.

13Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;

14Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.

  • “Sonnet 33: Full many a glorious morning have I seen” Introduction

    • "Sonnet 33" is part of a group of Shakespeare's sonnets sometimes known as the "Fair Youth" sequence, which consists of poems addressed to a beautiful and beloved young nobleman. Likely written in the 1590s, this poem was first printed in 1609 in a collection dedicated to a mysterious "Mr. W.H." (whose identity remains uncertain to this day). The speaker of this sonnet is suffering from some serious disillusionment: the young man he loves has betrayed him. But the speaker is also doing his best to forgive his beloved. Even the almighty sun, the speaker reflects, is sometimes marred by clouds—so why should I be surprised that his lover, the sunshine of his life, has proven less than perfect, too? This complex, conflicted poem expresses both mature forgiveness and bitter disappointment.

  • “Sonnet 33: Full many a glorious morning have I seen” Summary

    • I've seen plenty of beautiful mornings—mornings when the lordly sun looks kindly on the mountains, kisses the green meadows with his golden light, and turns pale brooks to gold with his celestial magic—when then, all of a sudden, the sun lets lowly clouds disfigure his heavenly face, hiding him from the sorrowful world, and then creeps away, ashamed, to set in the west. My "sun," my lover, "shone" on me just that way one lovely morning, both blessing and conquering me with the light of his love. But alas! That only lasted a short while. Now, the clouds have come to separate him from me. But in spite of that, I don't love him any less: mortal men will certainly fail sometimes, if even the sun itself does.

  • “Sonnet 33: Full many a glorious morning have I seen” Themes

    • Theme Love and Forgiveness

      Love and Forgiveness

      The speaker of "Sonnet 33" is trying his best to get over his lover’s betrayal. Comparing his straying or withholding lover to the sun, the speaker reflects that even the most beautiful morning sometimes lets itself be spoiled by storm clouds. If even the mighty sun can be “staine[d]” this way, then it only follows that even the most wonderful of people should fail sometimes, too. Not even a truly glorious lover, this speaker concludes, can be expected to be perfect all the time, meaning that love can't survive without forgiveness. In other words, love has to outlast even painful disillusionment.

      The love that the speaker and his beloved have shared is like morning sunlight: it transforms and glorifies the whole world with its “kiss[es].” But the sun itself sometimes ducks behind the clouds—so it follows that a mere “sun of the world” (a pun on “son of the world,” an everyday mortal) should also falter from time to time. Imagining the sun slinking off to the west to set in “disgrace,” the speaker hints that his lover has done something truly shameful: if his lover was only “an hour mine,” it seems pretty likely that he’s cheated on the speaker.

      But even the worst misbehavior doesn’t have to mean the end of love. If the glorious sun itself can’t shine all the time, the speaker concludes, he can’t expect his lover to behave perfectly all the time, either.

      This doesn’t mean the speaker isn’t clearly hurt by his lover’s betrayal! The speaker imagines the “clouds” of bad behavior that have blocked out his lover’s metaphorical light as “ugly” and “base[]” (or lowly). But, taking the long perspective, he’s also willing to be philosophical about his lover’s inconstancy, and to go on loving in spite of his suffering. Even if his lover can’t shine steadily all the time, in other words, the speaker’s love for his lover can. To love, the speaker implies, one has to learn to forgive.

    • Theme The Pain of Disappointment and Disillusionment

      The Pain of Disappointment and Disillusionment

      While the speaker of this poem swears that he loves his beloved as much as ever in spite of his betrayal, the poem hints that the speaker is also seriously disappointed. The speaker’s images of his lover as the sun suggest that he’s used to seeing his lover in an idealized and even divine light. But when his lover cheats on him, he has to accept that his lover isn’t perfect: he’s just a man “of the world,” an ordinary mortal. Imperfection, this poem suggests, is a fact of life, and it doesn’t have to mean the end of love—but it’s also a bitter pill to swallow.

      This speaker’s image of a sun covered by storm clouds suggests that he’s gone from seeing his lover as an ideal, almost godlike figure to understanding that he’s actually fallible. Just as the sun goes from benevolently blessing the world with golden light to shamefacedly scurrying behind the clouds, the speaker’s lover has lost his shine. Through some unknown betrayal or failure, he’s gone from seeming like a glorious god to an ordinary, disappointing person.

      In the wake of this disappointment, the speaker might even be questioning his whole relationship with his lover. When he imagines the sun “flatter[ing]” the mountaintops, there’s a hint that he’s reexamining the love they shared, wondering if it might have been founded more on convenient lies than sincere feeling.

      While the speaker accepts that even his idealized lover is a flawed, mortal man—and vows that he doesn’t love him any less for it—a hint of bitterness in the speaker’s tone suggests that accepting this kind of disappointment isn’t easy. Imagining his lover as a mere “sun of the world”—that is, in a pun, a “son of the world,” a guy just like any other guy—he at once seems to accept that his lover is flawed, and to feel as if he’s lost some special magic. It’s really as if the life-giving light of the sun has flickered out for him.

      Romantic disappointment isn’t just inherently painful, this poem suggests: it’s also disillusioning, a disenchantment that can bring an idealized love right down to earth.

  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Sonnet 33: Full many a glorious morning have I seen”

    • Lines 1-2

      Full many a glorious morning have I seen
      Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,

      "Sonnet 33" begins with a reminiscence: the speaker thinks back on beautiful mornings he's known, when the sun shone beautifully on the mountains.

      Already, in the first two lines, something metaphorical seems to be going on here. The speaker personifies the remembered lovely morning: its "sovereign eye"—that is, the sun itself, full of regal power—doesn't just shine down on the mountains, but "flatter[s]" them. It's as if the sun is gazing admiringly at the world, like a lover. And since this poem is a sonnet—a form of poetry that often deals with love—the reader might already get the sense that the relationship between the sun and the world here might be about human lovers, too.

      The image of the sun in particular makes that reading especially likely: the idea of the beloved as the sun was so common in Shakespeare's time that it was almost a cliché. (Shakespeare even makes fun of this trope himself in "Sonnet 130.")

      If this sun is indeed an image of the speaker's beloved, there's not just romance in the air, but a hint of danger. The word "flatter" has some less-than-happy connotations: it can mean merely to compliment or praise, but it most often suggests insincere praise. In other words: the landscape the speaker is imagining here is already charged with both romance and deceit. This poem will certainly be about love. But it will deal not just with love's glory, but with dishonesty, disappointment, and disillusionment.

      There's danger here, but there's also plenty of beauty. The delicate, harmonious assonance of "glorious morning," for instance, makes those mornings a pleasure to hear about, not just to envision. Here at the start of the poem, the speaker is going to luxuriate in memories of what it was like when the sunshine of his life—his beloved—was shining on him full force.

    • Lines 3-4

      Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
      Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;

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    • Lines 5-6

      Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
      With ugly rack on his celestial face,

    • Lines 7-8

      And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
      Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace.

    • Lines 9-12

      Even so my sun one early morn did shine
      With all-triumphant splendour on my brow;
      But out, alack! he was but one hour mine,
      The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.

    • Lines 13-14

      Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
      Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.

  • “Sonnet 33: Full many a glorious morning have I seen” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Consonance

      This poem's consonance—and especially its sibilance—help to evoke the speaker's complex feelings.

      In the first half of the poem, the speaker's consonance suggests his relish of an imagined morning, a day when the sun seems to turn the landscape to gold. Listen to the gentle repeated consonant sounds in these lines:

      Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
      Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
      Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;

      Here, the speaker's delicate, tip-of-the-tongue /t/ sounds, whispery /s/ sounds, and muted /d/ and /g/ sounds all make it seem as if he's quietly relishing these words: this scene is as delicious to describe as it is to experience first-hand. And the long /l/ sounds of line 4 feel stretched-out and luxurious, just like those "streams" under the sun's golden touch.

      But soon, the "basest clouds" come out and ruin everything. Describing this terrible change, the speaker uses some of the same sounds to very different effect:

      Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace.

      Now, those sibilant /s/ sounds feel more like an angry hiss or a stormy wind than a soft whisper. And the /t/ sound feels sharper here, adding a sting to the speaker's tone.

      Consonance, in other words, subtly gives voice to the speaker's feelings: the reader can hear both his pleasure and his pain in the sounds he uses.

    • Assonance

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    • Imagery

    • Personification

    • Parallelism

    • Pun

    • Metaphor

    • Alliteration

  • “Sonnet 33: Full many a glorious morning have I seen” Vocabulary

    Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

    • Full many
    • Sovereign
    • Gilding
    • Alchemy
    • Anon
    • Basest
    • Rack
    • Celestial
    • Forlorn
    • Visage
    • Stealing
    • All-triumphant
    • Out, Alack!
    • Region
    • No Whit
    Full many

    • Plenty, a lot of.

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Sonnet 33: Full many a glorious morning have I seen”

    • Form

      This poem is a classic Shakespearean sonnet. That means that it's a 14-line poem broken down into four sections: three quatrains and a concluding couplet. The first three quatrains work together to establish an idea or a problem, and the final couplet introduces a volta, a new twist or a surprising conclusion.

      This particular sonnet has more than one twist. Here, the first two quatrains paint a vivid picture of a gorgeous sunny morning ruined by clouds. The third quatrain then introduces a metaphor that compares the shamed and clouded sun to the speaker's unfaithful lover. And in the couplet, the speaker concludes: in spite of my lover's failings, I love him still.

    • Meter

      This poem, like most English-language sonnets, is written in iambic pentameter. That means that every line is built from five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm.

      Here's how that looks in line 12:

      The re- | gion cloud | hath mask'd | him from | me now.

      But—like a lot of sonnets—"Sonnet 33" doesn't stick to that rhythm all the way through. In fact, a lot of the lines here lead in with a trochee, a front-loaded foot with a DUM-da rhythm, as in line 3:

      Kissing | with gol- | den face | the mead- | ows green,

      Trochees like this turn up at the beginning of every line in which the speaker imagines the glorious sun at work, "flatter[ing]" the mountains, "kissing" the fields, and "gilding" the streams. Those strong initial stresses make it feel as if the speaker is getting swept up in his wistful memories of those sunlit mornings.

      And take a look at the emphasis a trochee lends to the poem's blistering conclusion:

      Suns of | the world | may stain | when heaven's | sun staineth.

      Stressing the word "suns" (a pun on "sons"), the speaker's initial trochee here makes his final point crystal clear: his glorious, idealized lover is, after all, only a normal guy.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      "Sonnet 33" uses the traditional rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet, which runs like this:

      ABABCDCDEFEFGG

      These rhymes help to break the poem into sections: three quatrains with that back-and-forth ABAB pattern and a closing couplet with two quick rhymes in a row.

      In this particular poem, the movement from the quatrains into the couplet almost works like the setup and punchline to a bitter joke. In spite of everything, the speaker concludes, he can still adore his cheating lover: why should a mere "sun of the world" not duck behind the clouds sometimes, just like the real sun? The pun on "sun" here suggests that, for all the speaker still feels his love deeply, he's also disillusioned: he sees his lover as a mere "son of the world" now, not a godlike ideal. Saving that pun for the last couplet, the speaker conveys his disillusionment with a powerful one-two punch of rhyme.

  • “Sonnet 33: Full many a glorious morning have I seen” Speaker

    • The speaker of this sonnet is suffering. Deeply in love, he's trying to come to terms with the fact that his beautiful young lover has betrayed him. At the end of the poem, he seems to have reached a calm, philosophical conclusion: even the sun allows itself to be "stain[ed]" by clouds, so it only makes sense that a mere mortal like his lover should sometimes do wrong. The speaker's love can endure in spite of his lover's weakness.

      But it's clear that this thought is cold comfort. The simple fact that the speaker compares his lover to the sun suggests that his lover once seemed almost godlike to him: a force of magical, life-giving beauty, light, and warmth. Now, the speaker might even be questioning whether their former love was all that it seemed, or merely cheap "flatter[y]." At the very least, he knows now that his lover is no sun: he's just a "sun of the world"—or son of the world, a flawed mortal guy like any other.

      We're calling the speaker "he" here because of this sonnet's larger context. "Sonnet 33" is part of a long sequence of Shakespeare's sonnets, poems traditionally (though not exclusively) read as autobiographical. And in his subtle wit, his complicated feelings, and his powerful imagery, this speaker is—if not Shakespeare himself—then certainly Shakespearean.

  • “Sonnet 33: Full many a glorious morning have I seen” Setting

    • This poem's setting is more metaphorical than literal. The sun-kissed dawn landscape that the speaker imagines at the beginning of the poem seems real and vivid, but it's also an image of the way the speaker feels about his lover's behavior.

      This setting evokes both the enchantment of love and the pain of disappointment. The sun, which represents the speaker's lover in this imagined landscape, "kiss[es]" the fields and "gild[s] pale streams," making the everyday world shine as if it were made of gold. But it also "permit[s]" ugly clouds to cover its face, hiding it from the world that seems to love it so. And in doing so, it knows it's in the wrong: it scurries away in "disgrace."

      This landscape thus evokes the feeling of a good thing gone wrong! This speaker's disappointment and pain over his lover's betrayal feels like the sinking feeling of watching a perfect spring morning get ruined by low, dull rainclouds. (This setting thus feels not just emotionally precise, but deeply British, grounded in Shakespeare's native turf.)

  • Literary and Historical Context of “Sonnet 33: Full many a glorious morning have I seen”

      Literary Context

      "Sonnet 33" is one of William Shakespeare's 154 sonnets—a series of poems that reflect on love, desire, beauty, time, mortality, and faith. The first 126 of these sonnets are known as the "Fair Youth" sequence, and address a beautiful young man the speaker has fallen deeply in love with. The rest of the sonnets are devoted to another beloved, the mysterious "Dark Lady" (except for the final two, which are mythological tales about the love god Cupid himself). In their interest in the pains and pleasures of love, their elegant wit, and their ingenious construction, these poems epitomize the sonnet form.

      Sonnets were wildly popular during Shakespeare's lifetime. The English sonnet's tight, intricate shape demanded a lot of poetic skill, and was an ideal place to deploy the clever wordplay Elizabethans loved. And with their steady, heartbeat-like meter and harmonious rhymes, sonnets were also strongly associated with an evergreen subject: love.

      While Shakespeare is the best-known sonnet-writer in English, he's far from the only one. The sonnet is still a popular form to this day, and poets from Donne to Milton to Keats to Rossetti have written famous examples.

      But part of what makes Shakespeare's sonnet sequence special is the insight it gives readers into the life of one of the most influential—and most mysterious—of poets. As a playwright, Shakespeare seems to inhabit myriad different characters without ever revealing himself. But the sonnets have traditionally been read as at least somewhat autobiographical, and in them readers find a poet grappling with his own overwhelming feelings—and transmuting them into intricate, elegant art.

      Historical Context

      Readers new to Shakespeare's sonnets might be surprised that most of them are addressed from a male speaker to a young man. Explicitly erotic and romantic, these poems don't necessarily fit in with how a modern reader might expect the Elizabethans (that is, people who lived under the 16th-century reign of Queen Elizabeth I) to think about sexuality.

      But in Renaissance Europe, ideas about same-sex love and passion worked a lot differently than they do today. The people of the Renaissance certainly policed sexuality carefully. Sex outside marriage was a major scandal (and an important plot point in many of Shakespeare's plays for that reason!). And sex between men was often a literal crime (albeit one that many governments chose to prosecute selectively or to overlook). But Renaissance people also didn't really have concepts like gayness, straightness, bisexuality, or queerness. Instead, they acknowledged that powerful forms of love could exist in many different contexts. Marriage and the act of sex might have been intensely regulated, but love and sexuality were fairly free.

      Love between men was even sometimes seen as part of a longer intellectual tradition: while men weren't supposed to have sex with each other, art about their love for each other could be seen as a reference to ancient Greece and Rome. Renaissance thinkers venerated classical literature and philosophy in which love between men was often seen as an honorable and beautiful rite of passage. (No lesser thinker than Plato wrote a whole series of dialogues about the philosophical import of love between an older and a younger man, in fact.)

      In addressing his poem to a lovely young man, then, the speaker of "Sonnet 33" isn't so far outside the cultural standards of his time as one might at first imagine.

  • More “Sonnet 33: Full many a glorious morning have I seen” Resources

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