Poetry · Chapter
Sonnet XCIX explained
The speaker chides the violet, lily, marjoram, and roses for stealing their beauty and fragrance from the beloved, concluding that all flowers are thieves of the beloved's attributes.
What happens
The speaker chides the violet, lily, marjoram, and roses for stealing their beauty and fragrance from the beloved, concluding that all flowers are thieves of the beloved's attributes.
Themes in this chapter
Beauty and Transience
Flowers are depicted as thieves of the beloved's beauty, yet their stolen beauty is subject to decay, as seen in the canker eating the rose.
Truth and Deception
The flowers are accused of theft, blurring the line between natural beauty and borrowed, deceptive appearance.
Characters to notice
- Youth
The beloved whose breath, complexion, veins, hand, and hair are the source of all floral beauty.
Key passages
“The forward violet thus did I chide: Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells, If not from my love’s breath?”
I scolded the early violet, calling it a sweet thief and asking where it got its fragrance if not from my beloved's breath.
The speaker accuses the violet of stealing its scent from the beloved.
“The roses fearfully on thorns did stand, One blushing shame, another white despair; A third, nor red nor white, had stol’n of both And to his robbery had annex’d thy breath; But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth A vengeful canker eat him up to death.”
The roses stood on their thorns in fear: one blushed with shame, another turned white with despair, and a third, neither red nor white, stole from both and added your breath to its theft, but as punishment a destructive worm ate it to death.
The roses are personified and punished for stealing the beloved's attributes.