Sonnet 113

Constancy and the Muse

1 Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind;
2 And that which governs me to go about
3 Doth part his function and is partly blind,
4 Seems seeing, but effectually is out;
5 For it no form delivers to the heart
6 Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch:
7 Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,
8 Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch;
9 For if it see the rud'st or gentlest sight,
10 The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature,
11 The mountain or the sea, the day or night:
12 The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature.
13 Incapable of more, replete with you,
14 My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.

Notes

TLN 1570rhetorical device
“mine eye is in my mind”
The poet states the sonnet's controlling conceit: his eye has migrated into his mind. The physical organ of sight still operates, but it has stopped delivering images to the heart; instead, the mind commandeers every image and reshapes it into the absent beloved's face. The eye 'seems seeing, but effectually is out' — it looks without truly seeing.
historical The sonnet form
TLN 1574archaic vocab
“no form delivers to the heart”
'Delivers' here means transmits or conveys — the eye does not pass along to the heart the form (shape, image) of what it sees. In Elizabethan anatomy and philosophy the heart was the seat of feeling and judgment, not merely the pump that circulates blood; to deliver an impression to the heart was to make it emotionally real. Because the mind intercepts every image, nothing real ever reaches that inner seat.
TLN 1575archaic vocab
“shape which it doth latch”
'Latch' means to catch or seize — the eye grabs at each passing object (bird, flower, shape) but cannot hold it, because the mind immediately replaces the real image with the beloved's face. The word also carried the physical sense of latching shut a door: the eye snaps shut to the world the moment it perceives anything.
TLN 1578archaic vocab
“rud'st or gentlest sight”
'Rud'st' is a contracted superlative of 'rude,' meaning roughest or most shapeless — the ugliest possible thing the eye could encounter. The sonnet pairs extremes in a series of antitheses (rud'st / gentlest, deformed'st / most sweet, mountain / sea, day / night, crow / dove) to make the argument universal: no object, however coarse or lovely, can stop the mind from converting it into the beloved's face.
TLN 1582rhetorical device
“Incapable of more, replete with you”
The couplet closes with the sonnet's paradox: the mind is so full of the beloved ('replete with you,' unable to hold any more) that it cannot receive any other image ('incapable of more'). This total fidelity — the mind that is 'most true' — is exactly what makes the eye 'untrue': devoted to the beloved's image, it cannot faithfully report what it actually sees. Perfect inner loyalty produces an inaccurate outer eye.
historical The sonnet form