She Hath a Way (Sonnet 145)

In honor of the Oscars and my love for Anne Hathaway, today's post is related to the sonnet that is believed to have been written for Shakespeare's own Ms. Hathaway ("hate away" being a play on "Hathaway"):

                  Those lips that Love's own hand did make
                  Breathed forth the sound that said 'I hate'
                  To me that languish'd for her sake;
                  But when she saw my woeful state,
                  Straight in her heart did mercy come,
                  Chiding that tongue that ever sweet
                  Was used in giving gentle doom,
                  And taught it thus anew to greet:
                  'I hate' she alter'd with an end,
                  That follow'd it as gentle day
                  Doth follow night, who like a fiend
                  From heaven to hell is flown away;
                  'I hate' from hate away she threw,
                  And saved my life, saying 'not you.'

I'm not positive (need to double, triple, quadruple check), but I believe that this is the only sonnet written in tetrameter, which gives the sonnet perhaps a lighter, livelier feel.  The sonnet recalls what may have been or what was almost a dreadful experience in the speaker's life, but the tetrameter seems to convey a sense of relief, thanks to the words "not you."

The eighth line serves as the turn in this sonnet and introduces something epic, something pre-Miltonic.  Words have the power to cast away.  The words are so powerful that even the ones who are cast away or are hated remember where they come from and how much they love the deliverers of those words.  Banished Cordelia never forsakes Lear.  Milton's Satan, Joseph Campbell's Satan remember God also saying "Get out of my sight," and keep the words close to them, not for the meaning, but for the voice.  That's how much the beloved are loved.

The speaker of this sonnet seems to be having a similar experience.  The speaker is recalling words of hate coming from the lips of the beloved, whose lips were made by Love's own hand.  Lips produced by Love's own hand producing words of hate!  The words are so powerful; they basically have the power to banish the lover to hell.  The speaker seemed to have seen this coming, but instead was recalled to life, so to speak, by the completion of the beloved's thought.  The words of the beloved, instead, banish the night, or the darkness, to hell.  The lover's life is spared, but still, the words, lips, of the beloved have the power to condemn....