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Pallas Athene SONNET NO. 83        I never saw that you  did painting need      And therefore to your fair  no painting set;      I found (or thought I found) you  did exceed      The barren tender of a poets debt:      And therefore have I slept in your report,      That you, yourself being extant, well might show,      How far a modern quill doth come too short      Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow,      This silence for my sin you did impute      Which shall be most, my glory being dumb;      For I impair not beauty being mute      When others would give life and bring a tomb      There lives more life in one of your fair eyes      Than both your poets  can in praise devise.

•   Note the repetition of the following words, we find-you,
  you, you, you, you, your fair, your report, your self, your fair
  eyes, your poets.
  
  2nd Line.  Fair beauty.
  4th Line.  The worthless offering with which a poet repays
              an obligation.
  5th Line.  Ceased as from indolence to praise you.
  6th Line.  Extant = in existence.
  7th Line.  Modern = ordinary or common.
  
    This sonnet would appear to be addressed also to Pallas
  Athene-the spear shaker as depicted in statuary art.  Bacon
  tells us that her virtues are so great that there is no necessity
  for him to refer to them by means of his pen  although he is
  indebted to her for helping him with his muse and that her
  worth is such that he keeps silent except to say that in her eyes
  lives more life than both your poets  can devise in praise.  The
  reference to both your poets would seem to refer to Francis
  Bacon as a poet and to his pseudonym, Shakespeare as a dramatist.
  

 

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