Sonnet 109

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Sonnet 109 in the 1609 Quarto
Q1 Q2 Q3 C O, never say that I was false of heart, Though absence seem’d my flame to qualify. As easy might I from myself depart As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie: That is my home of love: if I have rang’d, Like him that travels, I return again; Just to the time, not with the time exchang’d, So that myself bring water for my stain. Never believe, though in my nature reign’d All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood, That it could so preposterously be stain’d, To leave for nothing all thy sum of good; For nothing this wide universe I call, Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all. 4 8 12 14 —William Shakespeare

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O, never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seem’d my flame to qualify.
As easy might I from myself depart
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie:
That is my home of love: if I have rang’d,
Like him that travels, I return again;
Just to the time, not with the time exchang’d,
So that myself bring water for my stain.
Never believe, though in my nature reign’d
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stain’d,
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;
For nothing this wide universe I call,
Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all.

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Sonnet 109 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.

The poet denies that he has been emotionally unfaithful even though he has been absent. He can no more be untrue to the youth than to himself. If he has wandered away, he has returned, and washed away his own guilt. Even though the poet is capable of shameful behavior, he could never be so corrupted that he would lose the perfection of the youth.

Sonnet 109 explores the uncertainty of a fulfillment of a promise made by the poet to his apparent love. The poet's promised love is inextricable from the fact that the poet is lamenting over a long lost lover who, moreover, has not seen him for quite some time. In the sonnet a sense of forced separation is felt in each quatrain, along with an inconsolable tone which Shakespeare uses to convey an anachronism of revisiting a time of ephemeral love. The poet ends the sonnet with a magnanimous confession of love which is most likely unrequited.

Sonnet 109 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form abab cdcd efef gg and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The 12th line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter: