Poor Soul, the Centre of My Sinful Earth is the first line of Sonnet 146 by the great English dramatist and poet William Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s sonnets were printed in 1609, when the poet was already a well-established playwright. The dates of the poems are unknown. Shakespeare probably wrote the sonnets over a period of years. There are 154 sonnets in the sequence, though some scholars believe that a different author may have written Sonnets 153 and 154, those focused on Cupid, the Roman god of love. Only two of the sonnets appeared before 1609, in a book of poetry called The Passionate Pilgrim (1599). See Shakespeare, William.
Like almost all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, Sonnet 146 consists of three quatrains (four-line units) followed by a concluding couplet (two-line unit). Each quatrain has a rhyme scheme of abab, cdcd, efef, with the final couplet a rhyming one (gg).
Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, [Thrall to] these rebel powers that thee array, Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body’s end? Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss, And let that pine to aggravate thy store; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; Within be fed, without be rich no more: So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men, And Death once dead there’s no more dying then.
This powerful sonnet is among the best known by Shakespeare. Printers accidentally deleted the opening words to line 2 in 1609, and critics have suggested a variety of possibilities for the missing words since then. The words “Thrall to,” as included here, represent only one suggestion. Other suggestions include “Spoiled by,” “Prey to,” and “Feeding.”
Sonnet 146 deals with the conflict between body and soul. Generations of English poets and religious writers have struggled with this conflict, often presenting it in the form of a dialogue. However, Shakespeare presents this conflict in the form of a conversation with the soul. In the sonnet, the poet considers the soul’s “pining” state as the body decays.
The sonnet begins by contrasting the soul as “centre” of the body”—its “earth”—to the “rebel powers” of flesh and passion. The poet develops the imagery of a house, or “fading mansion,” within which the soul suffers “dearth” (famine). He questions the “cost” of keeping up appearances (“painting…outward walls”) when the soul’s “lease”—or time in the body—is so short. Having pictured the body’s inevitable decay, the poet instructs the soul to “aggravate thy store”—that is, to increase its stocks. In other words, as the body decays, the soul builds on the “loss,” preparing for heaven. Inner, spiritual richness is gained at the expense of outward waste. “Within be fed, without be rich no more.”
Critics over the years have debated the nature of the religious message in Sonnet 146. On the most obvious level it uses traditional Christian imagery of body and soul, and depicts the soul’s triumph at death. Its final couplet seems to indicate a spiritual victory over death: “So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men, / And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.”
But many critics have argued for a more flexible interpretation of this sonnet. Some see a balance of Christian doctrine with Platonism, a system of thought named after the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. Plato believed in the immortality of the soul through reincarnation, the belief that the human soul is successively reborn in new bodies. See Plato (Immortality of the soul). Other critics note the complete absence of references to Christian notions of the afterlife in the sonnet and argue for an antireligious, more pessimistic meaning. Still others simply point to Shakespeare’s characteristic interest in paradox, or the seemingly contradictory nature of things.
The poet in Sonnet 146 speaks movingly to his suffering soul and searches for consolation in the anticipation of immortality. He hopes his soul might “buy terms divine in selling hours of dross”—that is, purchase eternal time through expenditure of earthly waste. But the imagery is harsh and the tone is ambiguous. The speaker is in an undeniable state of “dying” now. His soul pines and his body wastes away. The repeated use of the predatory metaphor of “feeding” paints a disturbing picture of souls consuming death, which consumes people. The poet may depict an ultimate conquering of death, but he also depicts the deep sorrow of confronting it.
For more information about Shakespeare’s sonnets, see Shakespeare, William (The sonnets). See also English literature (Elizabethan poetry); Poetry (Forms) (Renaissance poetry).
