Sonnet 64: When I Have Seen by Time’s Fell Hand Defaced
Sonnet 64: When I Have Seen by Time’s Fell Hand Defaced - meaning Summary
Inevitable Decay and Loss
The speaker surveys Time’s destructive effects on monuments, coastlines, and states, seeing a recurring cycle of loss and recovery. Those images prompt a personal realization: Time will eventually claim his beloved. The sonnet compresses public, visible decay into intimate grief, where anticipation of loss becomes a present sorrow. This meditation on mortality and impermanence echoes a recurring Shakespearean preoccupation with time’s power over people and art.
Read Complete AnalysesWhen I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age; When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the watery main, Increasing store with loss, and loss with store; When I have seen such interchange of state, Or state it self confounded to decay, Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate That Time will come and take my love away. This thought is as a death which cannot choose But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
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