Shakespeare Sonnet 47 dramatizes the unity of the "heart" and "eye" of the speaker/artist-a "league" which satisfies as it enhances the sensibilities of the artist.
First Quatrain: “Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took”
In sonnet 46, the speaker began by complaining that his “eye” and his “heart” were struggling against each other. But he had found their unity by the end of the sonnet, and now in sonnet 47, he continues to dramatize the happy advantage of the unity of eye and heart.
Because the speaker’s feeling and vision are now cooperating, they are each doing “good turns now unto the other.” Sometimes the speaker desires to look at his creations, and sometimes he desires merely to feel.
He begins his thought in the first quatrain but then continues before it finishes in the second quatrain.
Second Quatrain: “With my love’s picture then my eye doth feast”
When he desires to see with his eye or feel with his heart, his sensibilities no longer clash but invite each other to enjoy the fruits of each other’s labor. Sometimes his “eye” becomes “famish’d,” and he needs to look at his creations, and at other times, his “heart” is “smother[ed]” “with sighs.” He needs simply to bask in the fullness of his love and emotion.
His eye is nourished by “love’s picture” and then “to the painted banquet” his eye invites his heart. And at other times, “mine eye is my heart’s guest.” They both now “share thoughts of love.”
Third Quatrain: “So, either by thy picture or my love”
The blissful unity between “eye” and “heart” results in his love being artistically captured, an act which thus preserves for the speaker “thy picture or my love.” His creations remain with him, and even if his muse roves far from him, his inspirational urges cannot range farther than his thoughts. And through his poems, “I am still with them and they with thee.” He is, therefore, never without his love, his muse, his inspiration.
Through his eye and heart working in tandem, his creations capture all that is vital to him. Their unity provides him a home from where he never need stray. His artistic wholesomeness provides material for his physical and mental, and even spiritual, vitality.
The Couplet: “Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight”
Even if his physical eye and heart “sleep” or take a hiatus from creativity, he still possesses the image of the muse that continues to feed his fancy or which “Awakes my heart to heart’s and eye’s delight.”
Other Shakespeare articles: Who is Shakespeare?
Sonnet Commentaries: Sonnet 1, Sonnet 2, Sonnet 3, Sonnet 4, Sonnet 5, Sonnet 6, Sonnet 7, Sonnet 8, Sonnet 9, Sonnet 10, Sonnet 11, Sonnet 12, Sonnet 13, Sonnet 14, Sonnet 15, Sonnet 16, Sonnet 17, Sonnet 18, Sonnet 19, Sonnet 20, Sonnet 21, Sonnet 22, Sonnet 23, Sonnet 24, Sonnet 25, Sonnet 26, Sonnet 27, Sonnet 28, Sonnet 29, Sonnet 30, Sonnet 31, Sonnet 32, Sonnet 33, Sonnet 34, Sonnet 35, Sonnet 36, Sonnet 37, Sonnet 38, Sonnet 39, Sonnet 40, Sonnet 41, Sonnet 42, Sonnet 43, Sonnet 44, Sonnet 45, Sonnet 46, Sonnet 73, Sonnet 96, Sonnet 116, Sonnet 126, Sonnet 130, Sonnet 138
