Sonnet 146 claims that the soul has been starving itself to decorate a body that will soon die, and that by reversing the trade it can outlive death itself.
Sonnet 146: Full Poem
Poor soul, the center of my sinful earth,
Pressed with 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.
Text from the 1609 Quarto, with spelling and punctuation lightly modernized. Line 2 is damaged in the Quarto, which repeats “My sinful earth” from line 1. “Pressed with” is an editor’s guess at the missing words; other editions print “Feeding,” “Thrall to,” or other words.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about Sonnet 146 for quick reference.
What Sonnet 146 Means
Sonnet 146 is a conversation between the speaker and his own soul, about how the soul has been spending its wealth.
The first quatrain pictures the soul as the center of a sinful body, surrounded by rebellious forces. The speaker asks why the soul lets itself starve inside while it spends lavishly painting the body’s outside walls.
The second quatrain presses the point. The soul has only a short lease on this fading house, so why spend so much on it? The worms will inherit all this extravagance and eat up what the soul has invested. Is that where the body ends?
The third quatrain gives the soul new instructions. It should live off the body’s loss, and let the body waste away to increase its own wealth. It should sell worthless hours of earthly time to buy long stretches of divine time, and grow rich inside instead of outside.
The couplet promises the result. The soul will feed on Death, which feeds on human beings, and once Death is dead, there will be no more dying.
Sonnet 146 Line by Line
Each line, with the sense of it in plain English.
Themes
Sonnet 146 is the most openly religious poem in the sequence, and its themes are the old ones of Christian meditation.
Body Against Soul
The poem sets the soul and the body against each other as master and servant. The soul has been serving the body, pouring its resources into outward show. The speaker wants the order restored, so that the servant supports the master, and the body’s loss becomes the soul’s gain.
The Vanity of Outward Show
“Painting thy outward walls so costly gay” condemns every kind of care lavished on appearances: fine clothes, cosmetics, physical pleasure. All of it is spent on a “fading mansion” held on “so short a lease,” and all of it will end as food for worms.
Victory Over Death
The couplet promises that the soul, properly fed, will outlast Death itself. The idea echoes the Christian teaching that death will be the last enemy destroyed, and it gives this sonnet a hope of permanence that the love sonnets usually place in poetry or children rather than in the soul.
Form and Language
Sonnet 146 argues through three linked metaphors: a house, a financial account, and a meal.
Meter and Rhyme
The poem is a Shakespearean sonnet in iambic pentameter, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Its structure is unusually clear: the first eight lines ask questions, the next four give commands, and the couplet announces the result. The turn comes at line 9, “Then, soul,” where questioning gives way to instruction.
The Body as a House
The body is a building the soul lives in: it has “outward walls,” it is a “fading mansion,” and the soul holds it only on “so short a lease.” The soul is a tenant pouring money into redecorating a house it will soon have to leave. Our guide to literary devices in the sonnets covers extended metaphors like this one.
The Language of Money
The argument is also an accounting: “costly,” “large cost,” “lease,” “spend,” “inheritors,” “charge,” “store,” “buy,” “selling,” and “rich.” The speaker treats salvation as a sound investment. The soul should sell what is worthless, “hours of dross,” to buy what lasts, “terms divine,” in which “terms” means both periods of time and the terms of a contract.
Rhetorical Questions
The first two quatrains are built from questions the soul cannot answer well: why starve inside, why spend so much, will worms inherit it all? The questions do the work of an accusation without stating one. Our guide to Shakespeare’s rhetorical devices covers this technique.
A Damaged Line
The 1609 printing of line 2 repeats “My sinful earth” from the line above, which leaves the line two syllables too long and makes little sense. The printer probably repeated the words by mistake. Editors have proposed many replacements, and none is certain. Our guide to the Quarto and Folio editions explains how errors like this entered Shakespeare’s texts.
A Closer Reading
Sonnet 146 turns its whole argument on a single verb, and then follows the logic of eating to its end.
In line 3, it is the soul that pines: “Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth.” In line 10, it is the body: “And let that pine to aggravate thy store.” The same word, meaning to starve or waste away, simply moves from one to the other. The problem and the solution are identical except for who goes hungry. Everything the speaker asks of his soul is contained in that exchange.
Once the poem is about who eats and who is eaten, it keeps going. The worms “eat up” the body. Death “feeds on men.” And the soul, which began the poem starving, will “feed on Death.” The poem builds a chain of eaters, and the soul climbs to the top of it. The one who was hungry becomes the last one at the table.
That is why the final line can end on such a strong paradox: “And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.” If Death is only another creature that feeds, it can be fed upon. The line is often compared to the close of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet “Death, be not proud,” which ends “Death, thou shalt die,” but Shakespeare gets there through the plain logic of hunger rather than a direct challenge.
The poem’s place in the sequence sharpens its point. It sits among the Dark Lady sonnets, poems of desire, jealousy, and bodily appetite, between Sonnet 145 and Sonnet 147, which describes love as a disease. Read in that setting, the “rebel powers” and the “sinful earth” are not abstract. They are the appetites that the surrounding poems describe, and Sonnet 146 is the soul’s brief attempt to take back control.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Sonnet 146, answered briefly.
What Is Sonnet 146 About?
The soul and the body. The speaker tells his soul to stop spending its riches on a body that will die, and to feed itself instead, so that it can outlive death.
Who Is Sonnet 146 Addressed To?
The speaker’s own soul. It is the only sonnet in the sequence addressed to the soul, and it does not mention the young man or the woman of the other sonnets.
What Does “Poor Soul, the Center of My Sinful Earth” Mean?
The soul is at the core of a sinful body. “Earth” means the body, the mortal clay that humans were thought to be made from.
What Does “Death Once Dead, There’s No More Dying Then” Mean?
If the soul can overcome Death, Death itself will die, and nothing will ever die again. The line reflects the Christian hope of eternal life.
Why Is Line 2 of Sonnet 146 Different in Different Editions?
The 1609 printing repeats “My sinful earth” at the start of line 2, almost certainly an error. Editors fill the gap with their own guesses, such as “Pressed with,” “Feeding,” or “Thrall to.”
Related Sonnets
Three sonnets about appetite, the body, and death.