Sonnet 60

Sonnet 60

This sonnet attempts to explain the nature of time as it passes, and as it acts on human life. In the first quatrain, the speaker says that the minutes replace one another like waves on the “pebbled shore,” each taking the place of that which came before it in a regular sequence. In the second quatrain, he tells the story of a human life in time by comparing it to the sun: at birth (“Nativity”), it rises over the ocean (“the main of light”), then crawls upward toward noon (the “crown” of “maturity”), then is suddenly undone by “crooked eclipses”, which fight against and confound the sun’s glory. In the third quatrain, time is depicted as a ravaging monster, which halts youthful flourish, digs wrinkles in the brow of beauty, gobbles up nature’s beauties, and mows down with his scythe everything that stands. In the couplet, the speaker opposes his verse to the ravages of time: he says that his verse will stand in times to come, and will continue to praise the “worth” of the beloved despite the “cruel hand” of time.