Sonnet 16
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Sonnets 16 in the 1609 Quarto
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Q1
Q2
Q3
C
But wherefore do not you a mightier way
Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time?
And fortify yourself in your decay
With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?
Now stand you on the top of happy hours,
And many maiden gardens, yet unset,
With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers
Much liker than your painted counterfeit:
So should the lines of life that life repair,
Which this time’s pencil, or my pupil pen,
Neither in inward worth nor outward fair,
Can make you live yourself in eyes of men.
To give away yourself keeps yourself still;
And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill.
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Sonnet 16 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is among those sonnets referred to as the procreation sonnets, within the Fair Youth sequence.
Although the previous sonnet, Sonnet 15, does not overtly discuss procreation, Sonnet 16 opens with "But..." and goes on to make the encouragement clear. The two poems form a diptych. In Sonnet 16, the speaker asks the young man why he does not actively fight against time and age by having a child.
Sonnet 16 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. This type of sonnet consists of three quatrains followed by a couplet. It follows the English sonnet's typical rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg. The sonnet is written in iambic pentameter, a type of metre in which each line is based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The fifth line exhibits a regular iambic pattern:
Alternatively, "hours" (and its rhyme "flowers") may be scanned as two-syllable words, giving lines five and seven final extrametrical syllables or feminine endings.
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Wikipedia