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.
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