Table of Contents / Related Topics
www.sirbacon.org
Muse
SONNET NO. 107
Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love control
Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom,
The mortal moon has her eclipse endured,
And the sad augurs mock their own presage:
Uncertainties now grown themselves assured,
And peace proclaims olives of endless age
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and death to me subscibes,
Since-spite of him-I'll live in this poor rhyme
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes
And thou in this shall find thy monument
When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.
6th Line. Augurs-means soothsayers; Presage-means an
indication of the future.
10th Line. Subscribe-means submits.
Here Bacon writes that neither his own fear nor the whole
world can control his true love (his verse) and that although his
life had suffered an eclipse, he is now at peace (of which the
olive is the emblem) and that his love for his muse still looks
fresh and that in spite of death which insults (triumphs) over
dull and speechless tribes (ignorant men) he will continue to
live in this sonnet and that in this, his verse, shall find his
monument long after all mortal tombs are destroyed by time.
Bacon in his own works refers to himself as "the man in the
moon".