Analysis of Shakespeare Sonnet 60
Like As The Waves Make Towards The Pebbled Shore Time is a common theme throughout Shakespeare's Sonnets, this is most apparent in Sonnet 60. This sonnet is about the ravages of time. How time never stops and is constantly changing. Also how time is aging us, and eventually takes what is has given us. But Shakespeare poetry will stand the test of time:
Like as the waues make towards the pibled shore,
So do our minuites hasten to their end,
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toile all forwards do contend.
Natiuity once in the maine of light.
Crawles to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,
Crooked eclipses gainst his glory fight,
And time that gaue, doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfixe the florish set on youth,
And delues the paralels in beauties brow,
Feedes on the rarities of natures truth,
And nothing stands but for his sieth to mow.
And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand
Praising thy worth, dispight his cruell hand. Sonnet 60 starts with a very relatable illustration of a waves constantly traveling towards the shore. This is like time in that there are minutes constantly, continuing, going to their end. Each minute or wave replacing the one that just happened, in a continuous march. Just like every wave is building in strength and then crashing again only to be followed by another in its place. Time cannot be stopped, one minute is always followed by the next in a never ending cycle. The second quatrain says that a new sun rises and with time it rises to maturity, noon, where the sun is its highest and king of the sky. Then the sun starts to set and now what once gave the sun its glory is now taking that glory back, time. This is a metaphor of a sun having a human life. The sun starts out being born "Nativity" and then crawls like a baby until it reaches its highest point where it is "crowned" with maturity. Then the sun continues to fall back to darkness or death. "And time that gaue,
Like as the waues make towards the pibled shore,
So do our minuites hasten to their end,
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toile all forwards do contend.
Natiuity once in the maine of light.
Crawles to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,
Crooked eclipses gainst his glory fight,
And time that gaue, doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfixe the florish set on youth,
And delues the paralels in beauties brow,
Feedes on the rarities of natures truth,
And nothing stands but for his sieth to mow.
And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand
Praising thy worth, dispight his cruell hand. Sonnet 60 starts with a very relatable illustration of a waves constantly traveling towards the shore. This is like time in that there are minutes constantly, continuing, going to their end. Each minute or wave replacing the one that just happened, in a continuous march. Just like every wave is building in strength and then crashing again only to be followed by another in its place. Time cannot be stopped, one minute is always followed by the next in a never ending cycle. The second quatrain says that a new sun rises and with time it rises to maturity, noon, where the sun is its highest and king of the sky. Then the sun starts to set and now what once gave the sun its glory is now taking that glory back, time. This is a metaphor of a sun having a human life. The sun starts out being born "Nativity" and then crawls like a baby until it reaches its highest point where it is "crowned" with maturity. Then the sun continues to fall back to darkness or death. "And time that gaue,