Against the Light: Divine Radiance and Religious Experience

[David Payne]

I searched The Bard for The Phrase. The closest match I found I found was Sonnet 13, which is the first sonnet in which the narrator (presumably speaking for Shakespeare) openly declares his love for the Young Man (unless you count Sonnet 10). 

Anyhow, Shakespeare uses the phrase in a Biblical sort of "prepare yourself for the Judgement Day" way ("against this coming end"), though the metaphor is complex, literally drawing the image of bracing your house against the winter's day and figuratively suggesting (to me) that having children protects the estate of your lineage (or your beauty) against the "barren rage of death's eternal cold." 

Despite the Christian Judgement Day undertones, "the day" feels like an impending reckoning of unavoidable evil -- although there is a suggested escape, almost magically through reproduction: "then you were Yourself again, after yourself's decease, When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear."

It's really a lovely (though dark) sonnet if you go for that sort of thing, though I'll admit that I have some trouble untangling all the "you"s and "your"s in the first couple of lines.

Sonnet 13 (William Shakespeare):

O! that you were your self; but, love, you are
No longer yours, than you your self here live:
Against this coming end you should prepare,
And your sweet semblance to some other give:
So should that beauty which you hold in lease
Find no determination; then you were
Yourself again, after yourself's decease,
When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.
Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
Which husbandry in honour might uphold,
Against the stormy gusts of winter's day
And barren rage of death's eternal cold?
O! none but unthrifts. Dear my love, you know,
You had a father: let your son say so.



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