Knowles discusses Barnfield’s defense against claims of the “dangerous and sodomitical implications” in the sonnets in Cynthia (678).  In Barnfield’s response, Knowles explains that these “implications are rejected and turned back on the reader” but at the same time, may alert the reader to the sexual implications of his poems (678). Knowles leaves it then somewhat ambiguous as to Barnfield’s ideas with respect to the homoerotic implications of the sonnet. However, I would suggest based on Sonnet XVII that Knowles’ second suggestion may be more accurate. My focus is on the last couplet of this poem, where the speaker says “Oh how can such a body sinne-producing,/Be slow to love, and quick to hate, enduring” (13-14)? This line suggests to me Barnfield’s purposefulness and full awareness in the homoerotic implications of the poem–by calling the actions “sinne-producing” this seems to be referencing relations between men which would have been viewed as sinful. If there was nothing socially questionable about this love, this line would be very out of place.