Sonnet 64

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Sonnet 64 in the 1609 Quarto
Q1 Q2 Q3 C When 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 itself 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. 4 8 12 14 —William Shakespeare

Q1



Q2



Q3



C

When 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 itself 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.

4



8



12

14

Sonnet 64 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.

The opening quatrain begins with the personification of time, a destroyer of great things built by man, a force man cannot equal. The second quatrain portrays a victorless struggle between the sea and the land. In the last quatrain the speaker applies these lessons to his own situation, realizing that death is inevitable and time will come and take his love away. The concluding couplet, in contrast to Shakespeare's typical practice, provides no solution, no clever twist; only inevitable tears.

Sonnet 64 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form, abab cdcd efef gg and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The fourth line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:

The fourth line has both the first ictus moved to the right (resulting in a four-position figure, × × / /, sometimes referred to as a minor ionic), and a mid-line reversal. This creates a somewhat unusual case in which three stressed syllables in a row function as three ictuses, rather than one of them being demoted (as typically happens) to a nonictus.