Envoi
Argued by some but collectively understood by many, Sonnet 126 has been dubbed the envoi to the Procreation sonnets. An envoy or envoi, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary is “The action of sending forth a poem; hence, the concluding part of a poetical or prose composition; the author's parting words; a dedication, postscript. Now chiefly the short stanza which concludes a poem written in certain archaic metrical forms.” It has often been called the poet’s envoi to his Friend in the sense of rounding off the first set of poems”. Sethna has argued that Sonnet 126 was handed to Herbert just before his 27th birthday, completing the period of their 9-year friendship with words that were clear, allusive, highly emotional and deeply pensive. Paul Ramsey, author of “The Fickle Glass: A Study of Shakespeare’s Sonnets,” also writes that, “sonnet 126 seems a very natural envoy”. The same idea of closing is paralleled by the authors of The Norton Anthology. This "sonnet" or envoi, of six couplets, concludes the part of the sequence apparently addressed to the youth and formally signals a change in tone and subject matter in the remaining sonnets.
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