Sonnet XXX

by William Shakespeare

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste;
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long-since-cancelled woe,
And moan th' expense of many a vanished sight;
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.

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The majority of the poem deals with sadness. No new sorrow has come to the speaker; he is only in that sort of mood wherein he calls up everything that makes him sad and weeps over it again.

The only thing that can help one out of a mood like that is the thought of a friend. How can one be sorrowful if one has friends?