When Love Speaks - The Sonnets

I'm in love with Rufus Wainwright's song version of WS's Sonnet 29. (I've been blaring this song back to back all night!)

The poem begins with the speaker describing moments of great sadness. He continues by wishing himself to be like someone with more prospects, someone more attractive, someone with more friends, and someone with greater artistic skill and range of opportunity. The speaker then reveals that he is least satisfied in the things he enjoys most. The "turn" of the poem happens when the poet by chance ("haply") happens to think upon the person to whom the poem is addressed, which makes him assume a more optimistic view of his own life. It is an emotional declaration that remembrance of his friend's love is enough for him to value his position in life more than a king's.

Sonnet 29

When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,

Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least.

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

–William Shakespeare