Shakespeare Sonnet 90 Modern Text (Translation)

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Shakespeare Sonnet 90 Analysis

Continuing from Sonnet no 88, Shakespeare tells the fair youth to hate him if he wants but he should do it now “Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now,” when the world also dislikes the poet and obstruct his works. “Now while the world is bent my deeds to cross” he tells the youth to add to his misfortune and make him bend with indignity “Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,” but not to do it when he has already suffered a lot “And do not drop in for an after-loss:”

He begs the youth that when his heart has already suffered a lot from losing him, “Ah, do not, when my heart hath ’scaped this sorrow,” the youth should not again reject or scorn him and treat him like a conquered enemy. “Come in the rearward of a conquered woe.”He should not turn the knife in the wound “Give not a windy night a rainy morrow, “and make his suffering worse to prolong the defeat “To linger out a purposed overthrow.”

He tells the youth if he wants to leave him, “If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,” then he should not do so later after the poet has suffered small grief’s and losses, “When other petty griefs have done their spite” but rather he should do so in the beginning “But in the onset come; so shall I taste” so that that poet bears the worst part of his suffering first and that is the loss and scorn of the youth “At first the very worst of fortune’s might;”

In this way the other smaller sufferings of the poet which he is enduring now, “And other strains of woe, which now seem woe, will seem nothing compared to what the youth does to him “Compared with loss of thee will not seem so.”