Sonnet 38

Shadows and Forgiveness

Notes

TLN 519archaic vocab
“my muse want subject to invent”
'Want' here means lack, not desire. 'Invent' carries its Latin root: from invenire, to find or discover. The poet asks how his poetic faculty could ever lack material to discover and work with while the youth is alive.
TLN 521archaic vocab
“too excellent For every vulgar paper to rehearse”
'Vulgar' means common or ordinary, not offensive. A 'vulgar paper' is a run-of-the-mill poem or written composition — the kind any ordinary writer might produce. The youth's excellence surpasses what mere ordinary verse can adequately express.
TLN 527classical allusion
“Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth Than those old nine which rhymers invocate”
In Greek and Roman tradition, the nine Muses were goddesses who presided over poetry, music, history, and the arts; poets invoked them at the start of a work to inspire the song. The poet crowns the youth a tenth Muse, surpassing all nine — a hyperbole that transfers divine creative authority from the gods to the beloved.