The speaker imagines his love as a young eagle he once discovered. Wanting to test its true nature, he set it in the nest to see if it was noble. But as soon as his beloved’s radiant eyes appeared, the eaglet opened its own eyes wide, proving it belonged to the sky. Despite his efforts to hold it back, love grew its feathers and, driven by sweet desire, soared upward. It aimed straight for those “celestial eyes,” the soul’s sun. In the end, the love that was born and nurtured in his own heart leaves him, following the beloved as naturally as an eaglet takes flight. The mood is one of tender helplessness and awe: the speaker cherishes this love but can’t control where it goes; it’s a force that rises inevitably toward what it adores. A quiet sadness lingers, but so does a feeling that this flight is utterly right.
Sonnet LVI: When Like an Eaglet — Summary
When like an eaglet I first found my Love, For that the virtue I thereof would know, Upon the nest I set it forth to prove If it were of that kingly kind or no; But it no sooner say my Sun appear, But on her rays with open eyes it stood, To show that I had hatch'd it for the air And rightly came from that brave mounting brood; And, when the plumes were summ'd with sweet desire, To prove the pinions it ascends the skies; Do what I could, it needsly would aspire To my Soul's Sun, those two celestial eyes. Thus from my breast, where it was bred alone, It after thee is, like an eaglet, flown.