Sonnet 60: Like as the Waves Make Towards the Pebbled Shore
Sonnet 60: Like as the Waves Make Towards the Pebbled Shore - form Summary
A Volta Offers Defiance
This is a Shakespearean sonnet in three quatrains and a final rhymed couplet. The quatrains unfold an extended metaphor of waves and Time eroding life, youth, and beauty through successive images of birth, maturity, and decay. The couplet functions as the volta, shifting from description of Time’s destruction to a confident claim that the poet’s verse will preserve the beloved. The fixed sonnet form concentrates the argument and delivers the rhetorical turn.
Read Complete AnalysesLike 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 crowned, Crookèd eclipses ‘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.
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