When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.
This has been an important sonnet in trying to date the sonnets. Several words and phrases have prompted readers to ponder on the year it was written, ranging from 1588 to 1603. The main areas of concentration rely on the following: 1) the "eclipse" of the "mortal moon," in line 5; 2)who the "sad augurs" are and their "presage," in line 6; 3) allusion in lines 7 and 8, and if "confin'd doom" is in refernce to a certain event and which event that is. Of these, the most supported responses to 1 are: the Spanish Armada, 1588 (Butler, Hotson); the Queen's Grand Climacteric , 1595-6 (Harrison); the Queen's illness in 1599-1600 (Chambers); Essex's rebellion in 1601 (Tyler); the Queen's death in 1603 (eg. Massey, Minto, Lee, Beeching); a lunar eclipse, 1595 (O.F. Emerson); or an eclipse of the Queen's favour (Conrad). Answers to the second problem relate closely with the first, that is, with the addition of a fear of civil war as a result of Elizabeth's death and also the usual forecasts of political (and other) disasters that were forecasted from the eclipse. The third problem cites the confidence seen in lines 7 and 8,a dn therefore the overshoot of the proclaimed disasters. The fourth seems to refer to the imprisonment of some specific individual, eg. Southampton, who was
conflicting depression caused by utter disillusionment with the violence of the French Revolution, a depression he referred to as “the crisis of that strong disease / …the soul’s last and lowest ebb” (Prelude, XI. 306-307)1; additionally this alternate analysis will provide an insight into his later poetry, The Excursion in particular, as benefiting from the way in which Wordsworth responded to his “crisis,” with an analogical and instinctive movement towards nature that “conducted [him] again to open day…