Summary In Sonnet 19, the poet addresses Time and, using vivid animal imagery, comments on Time’s normal effects on nature. The poet then commands Time not to age the young man and ends by boldly asserting that the poet’s own creative talent will make the youth permanently young and beautiful. […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 19Summary and Analysis Sonnet 18
Summary One of the best known of Shakespeare’s sonnets, Sonnet 18 is memorable for the skillful and varied presentation of subject matter, in which the poet’s feelings reach a level of rapture unseen in the previous sonnets. The poet here abandons his quest for the youth to have a child, […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 18Summary and Analysis Sonnet 17
Summary In the earlier sonnets, the poet’s main concern was to persuade the youth to marry and reproduce his beauty in the creation of a child. That purpose changes here in Sonnet 17, in which the poet fears that his praise will be remembered merely as a “poet’s rage” that […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 17Summary and Analysis Sonnet 16
Summary Sonnet 16 continues the arguments for the youth to marry and at the same time now disparages the poet’s own poetic labors, for the poet concedes that children will ensure the young man immortality more surely than will his verses because neither verse nor painting can provide a true […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 16Summary and Analysis Sonnet 15
Summary In Sonnet 15’s first eight lines, the poet surveys how objects mutate — decay — over time: “. . . every thing that grows / Holds in perfection but a little moment.” In other words, life is transitory and ever-changing. Even the youth’s beauty will fade over time, but […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 15Summary and Analysis Sonnet 14
Summary Sonnet 13 depends on an intimate relationship between the poet and the young man that is symbolized in the use of the more affectionate “you”; Sonnet 14 discards — at least temporarily — this intimate “you” and focuses on the poet’s own stake in the relationship between the two […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 14Summary and Analysis Sonnet 13
Summary Sonnet 13 furthers Sonnet 12’s theme of death by again stating that death will forever vanquish the young man’s beauty if he dies without leaving a child. Some significance may lie in the fact that the poet refers to the youth as “you” in Sonnet 13 for the first […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 13Summary and Analysis Sonnet 12
Summary Sonnet 12 again speaks of the sterility of bachelorhood and recommends marriage and children as a means of immortality. Additionally, the sonnet gathers the themes of Sonnets 5, 6, and 7 in a restatement of the idea of using procreation to defeat time. Sonnet 12 establishes a parallel way […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 12Summary and Analysis Sonnet 11
Summary The poet now argues that the young man needs to have a child in order to maintain a balance in nature, for as the youth grows old and wanes, his child’s “fresh blood” will act as a balance to his own old age. The young man is irresponsible not […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 11Summary and Analysis Sonnet 10
Summary Sonnet 10 repeats and extends the argument of Sonnet 9, with the added suggestion that the youth really loves no one. Clearly, the poet does not seriously believe the young man to be incapable of affection, for then there would be no point in the poet’s trying to maintain […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 10