Sonnet 143

The Dark Lady: Reckoning

Notes

TLN 1988archaic vocab
“careful housewife runs to catch”
'Careful' here means full of care — attentive, industrious — not merely worried (OED s.v. 'careful,' adj., sense 2: 'taking pains, diligent'). 'Housewife' names the mistress of a household, a woman responsible for the domestic economy. The word is neutral and competent, not demeaning: a careful housewife is one who does her job well, which is exactly what makes the irony land — this very diligence is what causes her to abandon the child.
TLN 1993archaic vocab
“whose busy care is bent”
'Bent' means directed, aimed, fixed upon (OED s.v. 'bent,' adj., sense 1: 'directed, inclined, set on'). 'Busy care' means the housewife's energetic, preoccupied attention. The line means: the child cries after its mother, whose entire concentrated attention is aimed at the thing she is chasing. This is also the syntactic hinge between the neglected child (line 1992) and the object of the chase (line 1994).
TLN 2001archaic vocab
“my loud crying still”
'Still' here is a verb meaning to quiet, to silence, to calm (OED s.v. 'still,' v.1, sense 1: 'to make still or quiet'). The poet will pray she gets her 'Will' if she turns back and stills — silences — his infant-like crying. The word picks up the baby conceit: a mother stills a child by returning to comfort it.