How many a holy and obsequious tear Hath dear religious love stol’n from mine eye, As interest of the dead, which now appear But things remov’d that hidden in thee lie!

Developing an idea introduced at the end of Sonnet 30, this poem figures the young man's superiority in terms of the possession of all the love the speaker has ever experienced.

It follows the form's typical rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.

Like other Shakespearean sonnets it is written in iambic pentameter, a type of metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions per line.

Critics such as Malone, Collier, Dowden and Larsen glossed "obsequious" as "funereal"[citation needed];[2] others have preferred the simpler "dutiful".