Sonnet 30: When to the sessions of sweet silent thought Literary Elements

The poem is written from the first-person limited perspective.

The poem is a 14-line English sonnet written in iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

The sessions of sweet silent thought (metaphor)

Thinking silently is compared to a court session in the poem.

Long since canceled woe (metaphor)

Woe is described as a debt that has been paid in full, or “canceled”

“Sessions of sweet silent thought / I summon” (alliteration of the initial letter "s")

"And with old woes new wail my dear times waste" (alliteration of the initial letter "w")

“Sessions of sweet silent (assonance of "e" and "i" sounds)

“Love’s long [. . .] woe” (assonance of "o" sounds)

“Woe to woe tell o’er” (assonance of "o" and "e" sounds)

“Of fore-bemoanèd moan” (assonance of "o" and "e" sounds)

There is no obvious irony in the poem. However, some critics argue that the poem exhibits verbal irony because the speaker describes his thinking as "silent" but goes on to describe weeping, groaning, crying, and moaning.

Elizabethan lyric poem, English sonnet

The setting of the poem is at an unnamed place and time when the speaker recalls his past and is feeling a dep sense of loss.

The tone of the poem is calm at the beginning. It then moves to an agitated and melancholy tone before moving to a feeling of relief.

The protagonist of the poem is the speaker, who has experienced much loss in life. The antagonist is death and the passage of time.

The major conflict of the poem is between the speaker's desire to hold on to people and periods in life he values versus mortality and the passage of time which take these away.

The climax comes in the final couplet which announces that all the losses the speaker has experienced in life are restored by the mere thought of the friend.

In the first line, the speaker describes his meditations on the past as "sweet." However, the descriptions that follow are full of pain and suffering rather than sweetness. It is only in the final line that it becomes clear why melancholic dwelling on the past can be sweet: it reminds the speaker to think about the friend that he loves.

“Drown an eye”: Normally parts of the body cannot be described as "drowning" in English; only people can drown. The speaker’s tears are so intense that his eye is compared to a person.