Free Essays On Shakespeares Sonnet 65 :: Sonnet essays

Analysis of Sonnet 65   Since brass, nor stone, nor universe, nor boundless sea, But sad deathrate oersways their power, How with this rage shall saucer hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower? Oh how shall summers honey breath hold out Against the wrackful siege of strike days, When rocks impregnable are not so stout Nor gates of brace so strong but time decays? Oh fearful meditation where, alack, Shall Times outmatch jewel from Times chest lie hid? Or what strong hand drive out hold his swift foot back? Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid? Oh none, unless this miracle have might- That in black ink my love life may still shine bright.       This praise shares several similarities in vision as sonnets 63 and 66, and also to the theme of time and Rome as seen in Spencers translatory sonnet sequence, _Ruins of Rome by Bellay_. To best understand this sonnet we must realize to what or whom the pronouns refer to. My explication rel ies on their in problem 2 referring to both time and rail at, a theme sustained from sonnet 64. 1-2 Only depressing mortality can overturn the tyranny of time and ruin, considering that brass, stone, earth or sea cannot prevent it. Thus, death is an escape from time and the ruin which it imposes. The second quatrain is reminiscent of the thematic imagery of Romes susception to time in sonnet 9 of _Ruines of Rome_ Why were not these Romane palaces / Made of some matter no lesse fime and strong? . . . All things which beneath the Moone haue being / Are temporall, and subject to decay. repeat the elements in the first line of the sonnet, Shakespeare is iterating the inability to avoid and prevent time. buffet days also shares this imagery as Times pestiferous hand crushd which, to lineage further, appears as iniurious time in Spencers work. Knowing this, he appeals to dreadful and injurious knowledge in line 9 where should we hide times most curious jewel our youth from the vault it is held in. the reason I believe the jewel to be a symbol of youth stems from sonnet 63, in which time steals by the treasure of his spring. Spring here, and in many other sonnets of Shakespeare, refers to youth and intimate prime.