Volta project, part 75

Blogging before I drive to Ann Arbor to get my daughter  J  _______________________________________

LXXV

  So are you to my thoughts as food to life,

  Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground;

  And for the peace of you I hold such strife

  As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found.

  Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon

  Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;

  Now counting best to be with you alone,

  Then better'd that the world may see my pleasure:

  Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,

  And by and by clean starved for a look;

  Possessing or pursuing no delight,

  Save what is had, or must from you be took.

    Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,

    Or gluttoning on all, or all away.

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As food to life—and I’m reading this on the day before Thanksgiving  J  The pairs of opposites that run through the poem—peace/strife in line 3, line 5/line6, line 7/line 8, line 9/line 10—each serves as a turn by virtue of the opposition in it.  The closing couplet, with the final pair of opposites in its two lines, makes the or at the beginning of the last line the main volta of the sonnet.