Shakespearean Sonnet
The Elizabethan age was known as England's Golden Age, in which it was the most splendid period of English literature. Queen Elizabeth I of England was the symbol for this great time. It was a period of many changes in English politics, economy, religion, and language. During the Elizabethan Age, under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the arts flourished with English writers producing some of the greatest poetry and drama in the world. England hasn't seen its like since, and most centuries have never experienced such an age. The three chief forms of poetry that flourished during the Elizabethan Age were the lyric, the sonnet and narrative poetry. One of the most recognized poets of the Elizabethan Age was none other than William Shakespeare who is universally regarded as the greatest dramatist and the finest poet of the English language. From Shakespeare's composition of 154 poems, as well as other Elizabethan poems, they are concerned with love, death, time and the relation of man and God. Shakespeare's sonnets 19 and 104 are evident examples of poems concerning time, demonstrating its destructive nature. In the composition of Shakespeare's sonnet 19, it is a poem specifically dealing with the issue of time, ju
In the third quatrain (lines 9-12) there is the motif of the old as something vile that soils the new, relating to the idea that time will eventually destroy the young man's youth ("carve", "fair brow", "lines", "antique pen", "untainted", "beauty's patter"). Furthermore, the poet created little motifs or sub-themes on top of all this. Nothing is important but his lover; his lover is eternal, both in beauty and spirit. In quatrain one, Shakespeare says that ultimately time conquers everything in the sense that everything will grow old and die that time will eventually wear down even the highest mountain on earth. The theme, which was that even though time devastates all, youth can still be preserved forever in the lines of a poem, was achieved by using several figurative devices such as personification and secondary motifs (sub-themes related to the general theme). In the last two lines of the first quatrain, lines 3-4, Shakespeare refers to a tiger and phoenix, in which he says that time can make even the most fierce tiger grow old to the point that his teeth will fall out and that you can even make the phoenix, which is a legendary bird that had a life span of more than 500 years, die eventually even though when they die, they are reborn from their ashes, "Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws, And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;". Overall, in the first two quatrains, Shakespeare is simply raving about the young friend's beauty, in which the poet has observed for 3 years now as it is seemingly unblemished by time. The general theme that is being exhibited from sonnet 19, is about the destructive power of time, which consumes everything in its path. The overall message coming through from quatrain two was basically saying that you (time) may destroy the beauty of everything in nature, but in the end, the poet will not allow time to do one thing. This "one most heinous crime" aspect then follows through into quatrain three. Eventually, time will also destroy the poet's beautiful young friend. Shakespeare then goes onto say that time can make a lion grow old, and lose the sharpness of his claws, and that time can make it so that the earth, which gives birth to all life, will seem to devour that which it gave life to because everything gets buried in the earth when it dies, "Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws, And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;". He will stay young without aging because his poetry will preserve him as being young forever, "O, carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow, Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen; Him in thy course untainted do allow For beauty's pattern to succeeding men. Lines 3-5 has the poet talking about the three cold winters and wonderful springs that have passed by, where in summer the foliage had died away because of the cold winter that approached and then how the wonderful springs had changed to autumn, "Such seems your beauty still.
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