The court of memory
Sonnet 30 describes memory as a court of law. The speaker enters the “sessions of sweet silent thought” as if it is a court session. Similarly, he “summon[s] up remembrance of things past.” Again, this uses the language of law (as in a “court summons”) to show that his recollections are like a trial. To grapple with the past and feel its pain anew, the speaker puts his memories on trial.
Stoicism versus emotion
To be stoic is to be calm and emotionless in the face of pain. When the poem begins, the speaker is not accustomed to crying over the past. However, once he summons up memories, “Then can [he] drown an eye (unused to flow).” He intentionally remembers the past to make himself grieve. He is now a highly emotional person, as made clear by the words “woes,” “sigh,” “weep,” and “moan.”
Destruction caused by time and death
The main source of the speaker’s woes is time and death. He laments the “precious friends hid in death’s dateless night.” In other words, the endless night that is death has taken away close friends of his. Similarly, he cries over “my dear time’s waste.” This not only means that he has wasted his time but that time causes damage to all of the things one cares about. Time is an enormous wasteland. It is both mortality and the passage of time that causes suffering in the speaker’s life. Nothing is permanent and no one is immortal, thus life is painful.
Paying debts
The sonnet uses the language of finances and debt to describe the damage caused by time and mortality. For example, the speaker describes the “vanished sight” of friends as an “expense.” Similarly, he describes the debt of previous mourning as “canceled.” Even telling the tale of these losses is like an “account” which he now “pay[s] as if not paid before.” This theme shows how expensive thinking of the past can be. Just as debts can bankrupt a person, thinking about the personal “losses” one has experienced can cause emotional bankruptcy.
The power of love
The first 12 lines of the sonnet describe the pain caused by death and time, regret, and the emotional debts these create. Yet the final couplet changes the meaning of everything that came before in the poem. When the speaker thinks about his friend, his “sorrows end” and it is as if “[a]ll losses are restored.” His love for the friend is enough to make all of these earlier losses worth it. In fact, the speaker seems to purposefully enter the courtroom of memory to make himself sad because he knows that the thought of the friend will ease his pain again. That is how powerful this love is.
