Like as the waves make towards the pebbled
shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,
Crooked elipses ’gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet to times in hope my verse
shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his
cruel hand.
Summary: 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.
Read a translation of
Sonnet 60 →
Commentary
This poem is organized very neatly into the quatrain/quatrain/quatrain/couplet
structure that defines the Shakespearean sonnet. Each quatrain presents
a relatively self-contained metaphorical description of time’s passage
in human life, while the couplet offers a twist on the poem’s earlier
themes. In the first quatrain, the metaphor is that of the tide;
just as waves cycle forward and replace one another on the beach,
so do minutes struggle forward in “sequent toil.” In the second
quatrain, the focus shifts from the passage of time to the passage
of human life, using the metaphor of the sun during the span of
a day: first it crawls forward out of the sea (an image linking
this quatrain to the previous one), then is crowned with maturity
in the sky, then, suddenly, it is darkened by the “crooked eclipses”
of age, as time retracts his original gift. In the third quatrain, the
metaphor becomes one of time as a personified force, a ravaging
monster, who digs trenches in beauty, devours nature, and mows down
all that stands with his scythe.
Clearly, these images develop from one another: the first
describes the way time passes, the second describes the way a human
life passes, and the third describes the way time is responsible
for the ravages in human life. Each quatrain is a single four-line
sentence, developing a single argument through metaphor: time passes
relentlessly, human life is cripplingly short before it quickly
succumbs to age and decay, time is the ravager responsible for the
downfall of men’s lives. This is one of the great themes of the
sonnets. In the couplet, the speaker then stunningly declares that
he has found a way to confound time: his verse, despite time’s “cruel
hand,” will live on, and continue to praise the worth of the beloved.
This is the often-invoked corollary to the great theme of time’s
passage: the speaker, disappointed that the young man will not defy
time by having children, writes poem after poem about the mighty
power of the “bloody tyrant” time, then declares that his poems
will remain immortal, and will enable the young man’s beauty to
live forever. Sonnets 18, 19, 55, 63, and 65 all
follow this formula, and echoes of it appear in countless many other
sonnets.
