1. Oh truant Muse, what shall be thy amends,
2. For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?
3. Both truth and beauty on my love depends:
4. So dost thou too, and therein dignified:
5. Make answer, Muse, wilt thou not haply say,
6. Truth needs no colour, with his colour fix'd,
7. Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay:
8. But best is best, if never intermix'd.
9. Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
10. Excuse not silence so, for't lies in thee,
11. To make him much outlive a gilded tomb:
12. And to be praised of ages yet to be.
13. Then do thy office Muse, I teach thee how,
14. To make him seem long hence, as he shows now.
Do Thy Office
Dedication: To Elizabeth
Reflecting on the absence of Elizabeth doing her duty and asking Elizabeth how she can ignore the truth of Henry. That the truth and true beauty of Henry is what both he depends on and ultimately what memorializes her. Expresses that Henry's beauty is self evident and needs no further praise, questioning the reason for Elizabeth’s own silence in not recognizing him. Revealing the lie of this silence he asks her to do "thy office" and recognize him as her heir to outlive her gilded tomb.
1st Quatrain: (1-4)
In line 1 he tells Elizabeth she is shirking her duty and asks how she will rectify. In line 2 he refers to Henry being "truth in beauty dyed" comparing the dyeing process to concealing his truth. In line 3, he tells her that truth (himself) and beauty (Henry) depend on her. In line 5 he tells her that she as well depends and is in fact honored by Henry.
2nd Quatrain: (5-8)
In line 6 he beseeches her to decide for recognition of Henry telling her in line 6 that Henry needs no color and his color is set which is probably a reference to him being red the color of his Tudor rose lineage and his royalty. That Beauty (Henry) needs no artist's brush for his truth to be brought forth in line 7. Line 8 refers to his purity I believe.
3rd Quatrain: (9-12)
Asking Elizabeth his lack of praise is reason for her not to speak of his truth. Playing a pun on truth lie(ing) (lying) in her and telling her that her silence is not acceptable.
couplet (13-14),
Finishing off with the an imploring plea to recognize him as a royal which shows itself in him.
Commentary:
Again Oxford invokes Elizabeth for his Muse. But more generally in this sonnet the poet is clearly beseeching the subject to do something with the request to “Make answer” in line 5 and that request clearly involves the subject’s silence regarding the answer to the rhetorical question of the mysterious subject (he) “needing no praise”, “wilt thou be dumb?”. The beseeching nature of this sonnet will become more common as well.
This sonnet also contains a host of important references, the mention of truancy and thus the shirking of duty; the neglect of truth and thus the falsity of a “beauty dyed”. Which expresses the concealment and disguise of beauty (Henry) in something other than what he is. The mention of him outliving a gilded tomb reflects Henry continuing Elizabeth when she is gone. But more importantly the mention of the larger permanence provided by him seeming "long hence as he does now" conveys Henry being remember historically as monarchs invariably are. The poet’s mention to the subject to “do thy office” is an indication that the subject has official duties. Another harbinger is the linkage of Truth and Beauty in lines 6 and 7 to line 14 of sonnet 14. The couplet reflects Oxford's hope that Henry is made the royal he feels Henry already appears to be.
As mentioned many times previously, the notion of fortifying oneself before the specter of death occurs is a common theme of these sonnets but as will be seen is far more prevalent in those sonnets regarded as the requests to procreate to come. The so called "Fair Youth" sonnets.
Line 8 no doubt refers to the hybridization of flowers or in this case the lack there of in preventing impurity. Shakespeare of course had not only extensive botanical knowledge but played on this frequently. Notably Perdita of The Winter's Tale did not plant streak'd gillyvors or "nature's bastards" because of their own tendency to hybridize and produce their own hybrids.
Line 11 again reflects the same notion of lineage vs the physical tombs pointed out in 122.
The importunacy of line 13 to "do thy office" should be viewed in light of Hero's opening of the scene in Much Ado About Nothing (III, i).
Vendler has the poet creating a colloquy with some apparently factious Muse, instead of realizing that the Muse is in fact the subject addressed. Instead she sees the subject as the one being discussed who for whatever reason is supposed to outlive a gilded tomb and seems not to wonder why the poet asks the Muse to do thy office in line 13. Instead Vendler offers that the request is a result of the Muse being demoted to “feudal subordinate”. She explains that the “poet by ‘demoting’ his Muse from goddess or oracle to feudal subordinate, gives her the incentive to praise and thereby make possible the praises of future generations”. She thus has Shakespeare using the illogical ploy of demotion as incentive, as a result of her own illogical arguments.
Note:
This is the first sonnet where the gender of my reading disagrees with that of Edmondson and Wells. This is from the table Edmondson and Wells offer is detailing their impressions of the respective genders addressed in the Sonnets. Which they title "Sexing the Sonnets". Perhaps most striking and telling is how they make no determination on the vast majority and are quite noncommittal regarding the whole. Of course they give no seeming justification for their determinations. But perhaps hardly surprising as they remind me of the transparently charlatanistic and cowardly Capt. Spaulding in Animal Crackers. Of course the satire there was largely on the upper class patrons for the most part failing to recognize this. Readers are admonished not to be so humiliatingly deceived.