The breach between the speaker and the young man, explicitly described in sonnet 42, drives the lover to adjust his consolatory strategy according to the reality of a separation that he can no longer deny. Connected sonnets find consolation in the alternating states of mind provoked in the speaker by the beloved's absence or presence. Finally, as in the previous group of poems, other sonnets within this group undermine the illusions upon which the consolations depend.

Sonnets 44 and 45 both lament the unbridgeable distance between the lovers, working as a pair to find consolation in the lack of consolation itself. Sonnet 44 explains sorrow in physiological terms; as in the Neoplatonic sonnets, the two lovers share one being, but here that being consists of one set of elements (earth, water, air, and fire) that suffer division during times of absence. In these terms, the very fact of inconsolable sorrow proves the lovers' unity and the strength of their love. The second sonnet of the pair (45) explains how the combination of the four elements can provide a brief moment of joy in the midst of sorrow at the beloved's absence. The "present-absent" elements, air and fire (the speaker's sighs and desires), travel between the two lovers, and so provide a brief moment of completeness—the only comfort afforded during the beloved's absence: "I joy, but then no longer glad, / I send them back again, and straight grow sad." This pair of sonnets explains the production of a brief moment of joy; but the primary consolation derives from the fact that inconsolable sorrow is treated as an indication of the lovers' fundamental union.

Two other pairs of sonnets produce more satisfying but also more deceptive methods of consoling for absence. The first pair (46 and 47) describes a consolatory league formed between the lover's eye and heart. The speaker alternates between two states of delight, one caused by gazing on the absent beloved's picture, one created by the heart's "thoughts of love." Sight and memory alternately provide satisfaction by producing the illusion of the beloved's presence. Sonnets 50 and 51 invent what is perhaps a less self-deceptive method of controlling absence: the lover himself undertakes a journey away from his beloved. The metaphorical level of the poem suggests that the journey away from the beloved constitutes the lover's unsuccessful attempt to abandon one who appears to have abandoned him. This journey, however, brings satisfaction only in the imagined return to be described in sonnet 51. The next sonnet will use precisely the same strategy of consolation whereby a separation between the two men is necessary to the lover's appreciation of their reunion.

Sonnet 52 provides the most successful (because most comforting) consolation based on alternating separation and reunion. Rather than regarding absence as an occasion for sorrow, the speaker argues that absence invests the beloved's presence with additional value. This understanding allows the lover to alternate between hopeful anticipation and eventual triumph at the beloved's return.

So am I as the rich, whose blessed key
Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
The which he will not every hour survey,
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,
Since seldom coming, in the long year set,
Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,
Or captain jewels in the carcanet.
So is the time that keeps you as my chest,
Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide
To make some special instant special blest,
By new unfolding his imprison'd pride.
Blessed are you, whose worthiness gives scope,
Being had to triumph, being lacked to hope.

The argument in this sonnet has much in common with Gaunt's instructions to Bolingbroke to think of his "sullen" journey as a foil for the "precious jewel" of his homecoming (Richard II, I.iii.265, 267). But the comparison breaks down because Bolingbroke is to undertake a literal journey of limited duration from which he wishes to return. Shakespeare's speaker, on the other hand, has no such assurances that the young man will return from his metaphorical journey—an event upon which the consolation of alternation ultimately depends. The metaphors presuppose the fact of that return and so misrepresent the speaker's situation. The purposefully rationed pleasures of looking at one's treasure, celebrating feast days, and wearing occasional garments all come rarely but inevitably, and their enjoyment depends upon the precondition of possession. For in spite of the comparisons drawn in this sonnet, the speaker "lacks" the object of his desire in a more radical way than those who enhance their pleasure by limiting it.

The final poem in this group, sonnet 56, reveals the illusory nature of a state of happiness founded entirely upon the speaker's wishful thinking. Phrased as a series of commands, it instructs the youth to preserve the consolation of alternation that the lover has already constructed in this group of sonnets. Comparing their love to cycles characterized by inevitability (those of appetite, of seasons, and of sea-faring men), the speaker urges the young man to participate in the renewal of their love. If the young man accepts the vision of love that the poet offers, inevitably he will renew the force of his affections.¹⁵ The couplet again emphasizes the consolation (found in sonnet 52) of "seldom pleasure": "winter, which being full of care, / Makes summer's welcome, thrice more wished, more rare." But unlike the summer's return, the return of the absent lover is not inevitable—as the lover's need to urge it implies. The assumption upon which the "consolation of alternation" depends does not square with reality.