Summary The poet indicates his feeling that he has not long to live through the imagery of the wintry bough, twilight’s afterglow, and a fire’s dying embers. All the images in this sonnet suggest impending death. In the first quatrain, the poet compares himself to autumn leaves, but he is […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 73Summary and Analysis Sonnet 72
Summary Sonnet 72 echoes the mood of Sonnet 71, and the poet tells the youth not to praise his verse after the poet’s death, as his praise could not add to the merit of the poems and may bring ridicule to the youth. The poet’s self-denial displays a sense of […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 72Summary and Analysis Sonnet 71
Summary In this and the next three sonnets, the poet’s mood becomes increasingly morbid. Here he anticipates his own death: “No longer mourn for me when I am dead / . . . / From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell.” The elegiac mood expresses a sense of […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 71Summary and Analysis Sonnet 70
Summary The poet is unable to maintain his disapproval of the young man, but he forgives without forgetting. The youth can blame only himself for the slanderous rumors about him. The poet notes that the slander pays an oblique and unintended tribute to the youth’s innocence, charm, and beauty: “For […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 70Summary and Analysis Sonnet 69
Summary Although the youth’s enemies praise his appearance, they all but slander him in their private meetings. Contrasting the youth’s outward beauty — “Those parts of thee that the world’s eye doth view” — to his deeds, the poet, in a rare display of independence, criticizes his young friend. His […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 69Summary and Analysis Sonnet 68
Summary Because the young man epitomizes ancient standards of true beauty, he does not need cosmetics or a wig made from “the golden tresses of the dead.” In these sonnets, the poet exhibits a general tendency to censure poetic extravagance and to identify such lavishness with the youth’s false friends, […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 68Summary and Analysis Sonnet 67
Summary Sonnet 67 continues the thought of the previous sonnet, and develops a new argument in its reflection upon the poet’s contemporary age. Although the poet still professes faith in the youth’s natural endowments, he is put out of sorts by the public rage for artificial beauty in life and […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 67Summary and Analysis Sonnet 66
Summary Were it not that dying would take him from his love, the angry speaker of this litany of life’s disappointments would die. Everywhere he sees the undeserving win public esteem — “And gilded honor shamefully misplaced” — while the virtuous and needy are neglected, or even worse, disgraced. However, […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 66Summary and Analysis Sonnet 65
Summary Continuing many of the images from Sonnet 64, the poet concludes that nothing withstands time’s ravages. The hardest metals and stones, the vast earth and sea — all submit to time “Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, / But sad mortality o’er-sways their power.” “O fearful […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 65Summary and Analysis Sonnet 64
Summary In Sonnet 64, the poet is portrayed as a historian, philosopher, and antiquarian who dreams of time’s relentless destruction of ancient glories. Monuments that reflect the noblest ideas of humankind — castles, churches, and cities — will one day be “confounded to decay.” Sonnet 64 is remarkably similar to […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 64