How can I then return in happy plight,
That am debarr’d the benefit of rest?
When day’s oppression is not eased by night,
But day by night, and night by day, oppress’d?
And each, though enemies to either’s reign,
Do in consent shake hands to torture me;
The one by toil, the other to complain
How far I toil, still farther off from thee.
I tell the day, to please them thou art bright
And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven:
So flatter I the swart-complexion’d night,
When sparkling stars twire not thou gild’st the even.
But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer
And night doth nightly make grief’s strength seem stronger.
This continues the complaint of the previous sonnet. Evidently he is far removed from his beloved, and he sees in this a conspiracy between day and night to torture him. In his distress he attempts to placate both day and night by telling them that the beloved youth adds to them an extra glory by his radiance. But this has no effect and he is forced continually to commiserate with his own sorrows, reflecting that during the day he cannot be with the youth, and at night cannot sleep for continually thinking of him.
Sonnet XXVIII
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