Shakespeare Fans discussion

Lo! in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty;
And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage:
But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,
Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,
The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are
From his low tract, and look another way:
So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon
Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son.

"Lo! in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye"

I look at this sonnet as a poem about dead reckoning, or rather rejecting dead reckoning...for 'position fixing'. Is it possible Shakespeare is using navigation for a metaphor on how he loves or these characters in sonnets love?

"In navigation, dead reckoning is the process of calculating one's current position by using a previously determined position, or fix, and advancing that position based upon known or estimated speeds over elapsed time and course. The corresponding term in biology, used to describe the processes by which animals update their estimates of position or heading, is path integration." Wiki


"Celestial navigation, also known as astronavigation, is the ancient and modern practice of position fixing that enables a navigator to transition through a space without having to rely on estimated calculations, or dead reckoning, to know their position. Celestial navigation uses "sights", or angular measurements taken between a celestial body (e.g. the Sun, the Moon, a planet, or a star) and the visible horizon. The Sun is most commonly used, but navigators can also use the Moon, a planet, Polaris, or one of 57 other navigational stars whose coordinates are tabulated in the nautical almanac and air almanacs." Wiki

There are also a couple of sexual play-with-words in this sonnet.

"highest pitch" (use your imagination, it is a common euphemism today to say "pitch a tent" referring to bedsheets rising)

Then...

"The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are
From his low tract, and look another way:
So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon
Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son.

There is something about gaze in this that we look at the sun, we look away, the eyes are in the sun too? 'noon' is a euphemism for sexual arousal. 'die' was another word for orgasm. And sun is pun for son. Our legacy/immortality is which children. Somehow there is a feeling of wasting ones time in sexual arousal if not with someone else to make children?