same place, yet some people will be immortalized
while others are forgotten.
See also ENGLISH SONNET, SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS
(OVERVIEW).
FURTHER READING
Dingley, R. J. “Time Transfi xing Youth’s Flourish: A Note on
Sonnet 60.” Shakespeare Bulletin 12, no. 3 (1994): 41–42.
Peggy J. Huey
Shakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 64 (“When I
have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced”) WIL-
LIAM SHAKESPEARE (1599) In Sonnet 64, an older
poet broods about a young man’s vulnerability. The
poem is burdened by a dark future and mourns a
romantic commitment that cannot be as steadfast as
desired. It follows the standard ENGLISH SONNET form,
and the tripartite structure of the fi rst 11 lines strik-
ingly reinforces the chosen SONNET form. Each of the
three QUATRAINs begins with a repeated opening
clause—“When I have seen.. .” (ll. 1, 5, 9). The fol-
lowing images of decline and change diversely bring to
mind the theme of “Ruin” (l. 11). This contemplation
leads to a devastating realization: The beloved’s own
decline (and death) is equally inescapable.
The opening quatrain broods on the destruction of
earthly things, with the speaker signifying his emo-
tional alarm through the PERSONIFICATION of Time.
Although the quatrain ends with grand architectural
images, it seems to begin on more personal terms:
“defaced” and “age” suggest the physical body of the
young man, as does the “rich proud cost” that may
refer to the opulent fashions of a nobleman. The words
outworn and buried on one level simply mean that
young age is long forgotten—and old fashions are
made threadbare—by the time the speaker sees Time’s
defacement, yet the words also introduce visions of
ancient buildings, such as those in Rome, half buried
in earth. The next lines act as confi rmation: The
speaker describes once-lofty towers that have fallen or
monumental brasses enslaved (their inscriptions oblit-
erated?) by “mortal rage.”
The second quatrain is obsessed with incessant
change. The poet fi gures the ocean and land as rival
military powers, neither of which dominates: The
ocean gains position (“advantage”) on the land, only to
see the land “win” back territory from the ocean. The
eighth line wonderfully imitates this oscillating by
using CHIASMUS: “Increasing store with loss and loss
with store[.]” This line also insinuates that loss will
grow in either case. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE borrows
these images of fl ux from Arthur Golding’s translation
of OVID’s Metamorphoses, a Latin poem infl uential on
Renaissance writers.
The third quatrain is more general and subtly shifts
to summary: Its lament at seeing “interchange of state”
refers to the preceding quatrain, and “state” here con-
tinues the earlier political connotations (e.g., “kingdom
of the shore”). Similarly, “state itself”—whose meaning
is now closer to “condition” or essence—looks back to
the opening lines in its being “confounded to decay.”
Having seen this, the speaker arrives at the poem’s cen-
tral, punning statement: “Ruin hath taught me thus to
ruminate / That Time will come and take my love way”
(ll. 11–12). The critic Helen Vendler has emphasized
how the Latinate word ruminate makes possible the
powerful tonal contrast of the 12th line, whose almost
childlike simplicity—“Time will come and take my
love away”—constitutes a powerful climax to the prior
images. Moreover, the word ruin is literally present in
“ruminate” later in the line, a resemblance heightened
by Renaissance printing. The specter of ruin, then,
haunts the poet’s ruminations.
This use of dense wordplay is typical of Shakespeare,
and its poetic meaning informs the disconsolate COU-
PLET. Here, thought equates to death because it pains
the speaker so much it feels like death, but also because
no thought of the beloved is now without fears of
death. The last line also features a dual meaning: Either
the speaker weeps at having a beloved who will even-
tually die, or, despite the beloved’s vulnerability, the
enthralled speaker will nevertheless “weep to have”
him—that is, emotionally entreat the young man for
his love.
Sonnet 64 is also steeped in the CLASSICAL TRADITION.
In the fourth line, “And brass eternal slave to mortal
rage,” a fi rst glance might suggest that brass is forever a
slave; however, the notion that “brass eternal” is
enthralled to a mortal thing is a paradox made valid by
the phrase’s clear echo of the Odes by the Roman poetSHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS: SONNET 64 373