Sonnet 29

For the speaker, being a pariah is incredibly troubling and difficult. After some kind of public shame, either unfortunate financial circumstances or a stain on his reputation, he feels “in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes” (Line 2). This scornful and disapproving scrutiny makes the speaker withdraw, and he “all alone beweep my outcast state” (Line 3). But suffering the consequences all alone makes his pain worse, as contemporary readers would have seen in the word “outcast” the unforgiving and strict society of the day, in which exile and excommunication were common punishments. Feeling that the world has turned its back on him makes the speaker question even the intercession of God, as his prayers are now “bootless” and cannot even get a response from “deaf heaven” (Line 3). Only love can restore the speaker to fellowship.

The lark symbolizes the speaker’s fundamental change in mood and affect after he remembers his love. No longer trapped in the darkness of depression, the speaker’s emotional state lifts “Like to the lark at break of day arising / From sullen earth” (Line 11). This almost Homeric simile, a device that extends a comparison for several lines rather than making it a quick aside, demonstrates the speaker’s inner life rejoining the world it had left behind.