lost. How is this possible? Summer cannot last forever,
but neither can spring, autumn, or winter. Humans
may be beautiful, but all humans grow old, lose their
beauty, and die; they are subject to time. So why is the
speaker implying that the beloved can escape the
effects of time on his or her beauty? The speaker goes
even farther by saying that Death cannot brag that he
holds the beloved in his domain. Why? Because the
beloved will continue to live in the poet’s lines. But
more than that, she or he will grow “in eternal lines to
time” (l. 12) as though engrafted onto time. One way
of allowing certain plants to grow better or last longer
is to graft a branch (scion) of the weaker plant onto the
roots or main stem (stock) of a much stronger plant, as
roses were grafted onto lilac or privet stock. Or, as the
critic Stephen Booth indicates, lines can also refer to
the cords used to fi x the scion to the stock or to the
threads of one’s life, spun, measured, and cut by the
Fates. In this way Time is cheated, since the stronger
stock allows the weaker rose to live much longer than
it would “naturally.” The speaker is indicating here
that he has grafted the weaker scion of the beloved
onto the stronger stock of the poet’s verse, which will
allow the beloved to cheat time and be beautiful—and
alive—long past the beloved’s natural death.
Overall, the speaker, being rather prideful about his
own poetic abilities, indicates in the couplet that as
long as this sonnet lives—which is, as the speaker
states, as long as people are alive to breathe and see
(read)—the beloved will live because the sonnet gives
life to a person long dead by the time later readers dis-
cover it.
See also SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM; SHAKESPEARE’S SON-
NETS (OVERVIEW).
Theodora A. JankowskiShakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 19 (“Devouring
Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws”) WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE (1599) Sonnet 19 expands upon the
imagery found in OVID’s Metamorphoses of time as “the
devourer of all things” (book 15, l. 234). Some critics
consider Sonnet 19 to be the ending sonnet of the so-
called procreation sonnets, in which the speaker sug-
gests procreation as a defense against the ravages of
time, though most end that set with Sonnet 17.
The poem’s unidentifi ed speaker begins Sonnet 19
by noting in the fi rst QUATRAIN that “Devouring Time”
(l. 1) may blunt the lion’s claws, make the earth devour
her children, cause the fi erce tiger’s sharp teeth to fall
out of its jaws, and allow the phoenix to burn up instead
of being born again, as tradition would have happen to
the creature. All of these images point to the ferocity of
time in this world. In addition, in the fi rst three lines of
the second quatrain, the speaker observes that “swift-
footed Time” (l. 6) may manage to bring happiness and
sadness to the whole world according to its whims as it
swiftly passes. The fi nal line of the second quatrain
joins the third quatrain to complete the poem’s primary
concern, as the speaker forbids a personifi ed Time to
commit what the speaker considers to be the “most hei-
nous crime” (l. 8) of all: to carve a record of Time’s pas-
sage into the beloved’s brow, or to draw any lines at all
upon the loved one’s brow with Time’s magical pen;
instead, Time must allow the beloved to remain
“untainted” (l. 11) for men to admire in the future.
Nonetheless, the speaker concludes in the fi nal COU-
PLET, should Time do what comes naturally to it and
etch the lines of age upon the beloved’s face, the loved
one will stay forever young in this verse.
Each quatrain is built around a governing metaphor:
Time as ravager, its poignant effects, and its transforma-
tive abilities. The paradox of dying beauty is celebrated
in the second quatrain: The seasons are both “glad” and
“sorry” (l. 5) about the passage of time. Time is also lik-
ened to an artist—but an artist who preserves ugliness
not beauty, a situation the speaker cannot abide.
Other critics view the images as aligning Time with
Death, while also depicting Time as an entity who
would be breaking the law if it were to touch the face
of the friend in the course of its normal legal action,
which ultimately “arrests” all men in death. An alter-
nate meaning of the word untainted (l. 11) appears to
be “not arrested” or “not impeached,” so that the
speaker is ultimately asking that Time neither arrest
nor impeach his friend. Instead of Time doing what
comes naturally, the poet’s verse will “arrest” the friend
by providing a permanent record of the friend’s beauty.
More recently, critics have pointed out that the speaker
and Time pose similar threats to the young man: Both
seek to prevent his development.SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS: SONNET 19 365