Summary

Sonnet 100 delves into the psychology of fear experienced at night, when darkness strips away the visible world and the mind turns inward. In absence of light, the eye—though open—becomes a conduit for the imagination, which alarms the senses with fabricated terrors. These self-created fears emerge from the inner mind, producing monstrous illusions and impossibilities born of confusion and internal unrest. Drayton's sonnet ultimately suggests that devils in the dark are projections of inner evil, not external forces—a meditation on guilt, perception, and the haunting power of the subconscious.


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In night when colors all to black are cast,
Distinction lost, or gone down with the light;
The eye a watch to inward senses placed,
Not seeing, yet still having powers of sight,

Gives vain alarums to the inward sense,
Where fear stirred up with witty tyranny,
Confounds all powers, and thorough self-offense,
Doth forge and raise impossibility:

Such as in thick depriving darknesses,
Proper reflections of the error be,
And images of self-confusednesses,
Which hurt imaginations only see;

And from this nothing seen, tells news of devils,
Which but expressions be of inward evils.