Sonnet XIX, by William Shakespeare, primarily discusses Shakespeare's plea to
Time itself to stop the process of aging upon Shakespeare's lover. Shakespeare's unique
use of Apostrophe, metaphors, and line divisions allow for an almost persuasive sonnet.
Shakespeare divides up the sonnet into three four line partitions or stanzas of thought and
punctuates the end with a rhyming couplet. Within these truncations Shakespeare creates
four very different moods and more or less imperative statesmen's to Time.
Sonnet nineteen begins, "Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws", with
special emphasis on the capitalized "Time" to whom Shakespeare directly speaks (1). He
makes a tribute of speech to Time, which at that point in history was a formal way of
greeting people, to acknowledge Time's all powerful actions and deeds over the mighty
lion's paws, which Time has dulled and thus rendered useless. Shakespeare even goes so
far as to imply that Time even has dominion and control over nature itself, "And make the
earth devour her own sweet brood" (2). Blackmur goes even farther as to say "... in this
sonnet we understand time [Time] to be God in Nature" (Blackmur 317). Time is the only
acting force that allows things to die, because without time nothing can have action, and
thus Time holds the proverbial reigns to our mortal coil. However, when Time does allow
time to pass it also forces beings to die and thus be absorbed back into earth's soil. This
consumption of formerly living beings, as Shakespeare insinuates, is not only an mere
necessity of survival, but an act of cannibalism because the beings are of, "her [earth's]
own sweet brood" (2). In the next line Shakespeare puts a twist on the first line with the
use of parallelism in linking the lion and tiger, but uses a contrast in the method of
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