Sonnet 29

When the speaker experiences shame, despair, and disappointment, he withdraws from the world with a feeling of helpless loneliness, convinced that even God has abandoned him: “I all alone beweep my outcast state, / And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries'' (Lines 2-3). His depression makes the speaker feel as if he lacked the agency to do anything; directing his anger inward, the speaker begins to negatively compare himself with the seemingly better-functioning people he sees around him. Envious, he fruitless wishes for one man’s better emotional state, another man’s good looks, the friendships a third has developed, a fourth man’s talent and skill, or yet another man’s better and more wide-ranging prospects: “Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, / Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, / Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,” (Lines 5-6).

In this passage, as the speaker points to men who ostensibly have it better than he does, he isn’t using their accomplishment as inspiration to persevere, but instead specifically describes feeling jealous of what others have (“wishing me like” and “desiring” the others’ gifts). The irony is that while the speaker is aware of his internal emotional turmoil, he fixates on the outward manifestations of others’ better luck. In his despair, the speaker has fallen victim to believing that everyone’s life is as perfect as it seems, though he has no access to their inner struggles.

The speaker copes with his depression dysfunctionally, imagining that if he could have someone else’s qualities, everything would be okay. This need to take from others also manifests in his misapplication of faith, as he bewails the fact that God isn’t immediately helping him overcome his challenges. Thinking of his love allows him to overcome this deep jealousy and self-centeredness: instead of demanding heaven’s intervention, he now sings at heaven’s gate like a morning lark. The sonnet’s final couplet describes love removing all feelings of envy because it reminds the speaker of the thing he has that no one else does: “For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings / That then I scorn to change my state with kings'' (Lines 13-14). The speaker realizes that his love is the thing another man might envy, and he values it so highly that he now wouldn’t want to be anyone else, even a king.