Modern Reading
- Clock: Hours on the clock, the time passing
- Brave: Having great beauty and/or splendor
- Past prime: Declining from its perfection
- Sable: Black (A Heraldic term)
- Erst: Formerly, Once
- Summer’s Green: Foliage
- Sheaves: Bundles
- Bier: A frame used to carry a corpse to the grave.
- Beard: In Elizabethan times, “beard” was pronounced as “bird”
- Sweets: Virtues
- Others: Referencing other virtues and beauties
- ‘gainst: Against
- Breed: Offspring, Descendants
- Brave: Defy .
The sonnet is one long sentence, which helps to show the theme of time and its urgency. It also suggests that it is one full and rounded thought, rather than many different points. There are also many contrasts showing time’s power such as the words, “lofty” and “barren” when describing the trees, alluding to time’s power over all of nature. This sonnet also shows the power of time, in that it is deadly and not merciful. Shakespeare shows time's power by using the descriptive words of “white and bristly beard,” “violet past prime,” and “sable curls ensilvered o’er white.” One last image to take note of is the fact that the only way to defy time is by creating new virtues and beauties. And to do this, Shakespeare tells the young man, is by creating decadents. This fact is shown in the volta, the last two lines of the sonnet, when Shakespeare says, “And nothing ‘gainst time’s scythe can make defence, Save breed to brave him when he takes thee hence.”
When I count the hours of the clock,
And I see the beautiful day sunk in the hideous night;
When I see the violet declining from its perfection,
And black curls now turned to white;
When I see barren trees that were once so full of leaves,
That once shaded the herd from heat,
And summer’s foliage all tied up in bundles,
Born on the casket bed with white and bristly beard;
Because of this I question your beauty,
That your beauty will diminish with time,
Since virtues and beauties forsake themselves,
And die as fast as they see other virtues and beauties grow,
And nothing can make defense against time’s scythe,
Except to have kids to defy time when he takes thee hence.
Read more about this topic: Sonnet 12
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