The sonnets are poetic´s compositions formed by fourteen verses, hendecasyllabic, and consonant rhyme. Usually distributed in two quartets and two tercets.
Both concern about love and memory. They agree in the point in which love is considered a feeling which is permanent, never affected by time.
<em>But you shall shine more bright in these contents </em>
<em>Than (....)time</em>
Barret:
<em>With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,</em>
<em>Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,</em>
<em>I shall but love thee better after death.</em>
The language in both is different. Shakespeare in his poem starts with an image:
<em>Not marble, nor the gilded monuments </em>
<em>Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;</em>
His language is rarefied. in the poem we can use the recourses from the romanticism, for example, the hyperbaton, a figure of speech which consists in the alteration of the order of a sentence.
The language from Barret is more accessible. She uses the parallelism and more colloquial language to express a similar théme.
<em>I love thee freely, as men strive for right.</em>
<em>I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.</em>
<em>I love thee with the passion put to use</em>
Another difference we can distinguish is that Shakespeare alludes to the Greco-Roman gods
<em>Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn</em>
<em>The living record of your memory. </em>
While Barret prefers to talk about God
<em>Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,</em>
<em>I shall but love thee better after death.</em>
3. Before he thinks of his <<dear friend>> the speaker feels nostalgic and sad because of the << remembrance of things past>>.
<em>I summon up remembrance of things past,</em>
<em>I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,</em>
When he names his friend, the pain seems to disappear. So, the embarrassment of friendship allows him to release his illness.
The shift that occurs in the speaker's thought is viewed as a tribute to the dear friend because the speaker feels better and stops having melancholy thanks to the friendship.
<em> But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,</em>
<em> All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.</em>