Sonnet 50

1. How heavy do I journey on the way,

2. When what I seek (my weary travel's end)

3. Doth teach that ease and that repose to say

4. 'Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend.

5. The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,

6. Plods duly on, to bear that weight in me,

7. As if by some instinct the wretch did know

8. His rider loved not speed, being made from thee:

9. The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,

10. That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,

11. Which heavily he answers with a groan,

12. More sharp to me than spurring to his side,

13. For that same groan doth put this in my mind,

14. My grief lies onward and my joy behind.

My Joy

Dedication: To Henry


The second verse in this series on journeying and his horses understanding of his emotional state. However this time not from his “love” but from his “friend”, his favorite son.


1st Quatrain: (1-4)


Contrastingly this one to Henry after the previous to Elizabeth. Speaking that miles measured are between his friend, his way of referring to Henry personally.


2nd Quatrain: (5-8)


Repeating a similar refrain he shared with Elizabeth just previously.


3rd Quatrain: (9-12) Again even the horse knows of the sadness of distancing himself from his son.


couplet (13-14), Finally speaking of Henry and the distress of leaving him.


Commentary:

I view this sonnet as most likely to Henry (though hardly certain) because of the mention of the journey from his friend which even though used as a third person reference seems to fit the general nature of the poem. Which does not include any of the other mentions of love for the subject. I addition I imagine that Oxford penned two poems on this journey to his two respective loves and sonnets 51 and 50 here represent these and this one to Henry while not clear, the other to Elizabeth clearly is.

While this may not seem terribly satisfactory as a reason it gives this sequence made by these two sonnets a small symmetry by having one addressed to each of his subjects during this time of his likely move to Hackney. Which though hardly such a journey as it is in fact a suburb near to London today, it symbolically represented a new period for Oxford. One in which he actually remarried (to Elizabeth Trentham) and had coincidently enough a son named Henry. Who later grew up to be very close friends with Henry Wriothesley despite their roughly 20 year age difference, unless understood that they were secret half brothers.