This poem, one of the few I know off by heart, was almost certainly written for a man. Scholars have argued the toss ever since about the identity of the man, Mr W H of the dedication, the “onlie begetter” of the poems, as Shakespeare put it. But of his sex there can be little question. It is exquisitely beautiful and Leo is right to point to the joy and awe Shakespeare felt in gazing at this young man. Even though the poem’s conceit is that it is Shakespeare’s verse which will preserve the lad’s youth and beauty for evermore, so there’s an element of boasting there, nothing can detract from the intensity of this incomparable expression of male for male love.
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