Sonnet 55 Love Quotes

The "more" here implies that the beloved is already a brightly shining star—at least in the speaker's opinion. The sonnet is only going to add to his brilliance.

Although this poem is also about the awesome powers of poetry, especially in comparison to sad, stupid art like statues, the speaker always describes himself first as a lover, then as a poet. In the same way, this poem is primarily a love poem, not a just a poem. Any clever phrasing or memorable imagery exists only to preserve the beloved's memory.

This poem is powerful enough to protect the beloved against death. Even if the speaker never says it explicitly, it's pretty clear that the source of this power is the love he feels for the beloved. How else could he write a poem so muscled with praise that it can withstand war and death itself?

The purpose of this poem is to praise the beloved. At first you're probably like, "Dude, where's the praise?", because there isn't a lot of obvious complimenting. But this is one of those sneaky poems that tells you all along what it's going to do, and while you wait for it to finally get up and at it, you realize that it's been doing it all along. Sonnet 55 claims it's going to praise the beloved, and guess what? It's sneakily doing it in every line. Sometimes it's obvious, like in line 3; most of the time it's under the radar, implied in every image of war or destruction or death that ruins the world but spares this one beloved boy.

And it's not just the speaker who's filled up to the brim with praise. The whole world is full of love for this nameless man, thanks to these sonnets that praise him eternally.

The plural "lovers" reemphasizes that everyone loves the beloved. Once they meet him in the fourteen lines of this sonnet, his memory will live forever in their eyes, now imprinted with the words that praise him.