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Jacque Larson
Revised - Poetry Explication Essay
Dr. Easterling
March 24, 2016

The Power of Time

Time controls life. The clock says when the day begins, when it ends, and influences

everything that happens in between. Time has the upper hand in deciding the amount of effort

that is put into something, or in determining what things are worth spending time on. William

Shakespeares Sonnet 65 follows its speaker through his meditation on the power of time,

specifically focusing on the power that time has over human lives, beauty, and love. He is

conflicted with understanding how life, beauty, and love can hold out against the destruction that

comes with time. The speaker seems to want to fix it, but he does not know how, or if he can.

Shakespeare demonstrates this conflict between beauty and time by using devices such as form

and prosody, figurative language, diction, syntax, and sound. The speaker comes to a conclusion

without much resolution for his conflict. Time still has power over all things, but the speaker

may have found hope in his writing.

The speaker personifies time by giving it power over all other things. Time, or mortality

(2), has power that oer-sways (2) all of the strong elements mentioned in the first line of the

poem. The days, or time, make a wrackful siege (6) over the sweet summer. Time decays (8)

strong steel gates. Time has a best jewel, a chest (10), a swift foot (11). Time is given a

literal body. With this body, Time has the power to destroy everything, physical and emotional.

The personification of time invites the image of a battle between objects or emotions, and a

human being. Humans are capable of destroying anything, and as harsh as that may sound, its

true. Human beings can bend the brass, shatter the stone, contaminate the earth, and corrupt the

sea; and human beings can tear down beauty. Time has the power to do the exact same thing,
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illustrated in this sonnet by its personified form. Time exists beyond a single persons existence.

There was time and existence before the birth of Shakespeare, and time and existence continued

after his death. Human beings cannot outlast time because we cannot exist without time. Time is

ultimately powerful, and can destroy human life, beauty, and love in a way that humans cannot

destroy time.

The diction in Sonnet 65 is focused around the juxtaposition of strong and delicate words.

This juxtaposition is also an expression of the speakers emotions. Whenever the speaker

mentions a delicate word, for example beauty (3), a strong word comes before or after it in

order to over-power the delicate word. In lines five and six, the speaker says, O, how shall

summers honey breath hold out/Against the wrackful siege of battring days, (5,6). The speaker

gives us the words honey and summer, which have a sweet and soft tone. The sweetness is

beaten down with a wrackful siege, a destructive attempt to take control or attack the

sweetness, and battring days, a day of successively beating or demolishing. In this case, there

is absolutely no hope for summers honey breath because it is so vulnerable to and unprotected

from the battring days. It will be completely destroyed by the force and violence that time

throws at beauty. The contrasting words create a tone of conflict for the speaker that propels his

search for understanding how beauty may survive the destruction of time.

The syntax of the poem acts as study guide for the speakers emotions. Every line of the

sonnet has some type of punctuation in it. This amount of punctuation is necessary for the tone of

the poem, which is full of contemplation and questioning. Pieces of syntax that call attention to

the speakers feelings are the use of caesuras, enjambment, and endstopping. Line one, Since

brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea (1), uses caesura to create pause for the reader to

fully comprehend the intensity of each element in the line. The commas also create a list, piling
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the elements up, and demonstrating the intensity of each as they accumulate and become greater

in this list. Beginning the poem with this list suggest that the speaker is juggling many thoughts

all at one time. It becomes a list of strong, solid elements that set a heavy tone to the poem.

Within line one the use of the word nor is seen three times. This diction begins the

poem in a negative tone and immediately gives way to the hopelessness of the speakers voice.

The speaker is pointing out that some of the most powerful elements in the world cannot

withstand the power of time, or mortality (2). This line is also enjambed, which makes the line

feel as if it is rushing into the following line. This quick rush contradicts the effect of the

caesuras in the first line. The caesuras create a feeling of heaviness, but the enjambment causes a

quick and desperate anxiety for the reader and the speaker. The rush to arrive at the second line

ends in a greater sense of hopelessness. The negativity of the first line is met with the unbearable

concept of mortality. These clashing feelings continue the heavy tone of the poem. Most lines of

the poem are endstopped, which stops the questions in the poem from feeling too overwhelming,

but also impacts the intensity of the meaning behind each line. The reader can discover

meditation and anxiety in the speakers tone through endstopping. Whenever a line is endstopped

the reader can sense the speakers struggle to understand the concept of time and mortality. Not

only does endstopping allow readers to see into the speakers thoughts, endstopping makes it

possible for readers to feel what the speaker is feeling. We connect to the speakers conflict

because mortality is something that impacts every human being. We dont want human life,

beauty, and love to gradually die and stop existing because time decays. Therefore, when the

endstopped lines create a tone of struggle or frustration, the reader can feel the same internal

struggle and impact.

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Another affect of syntax is a sense of urgency, anguish, or hopelessness found in each

quatrain because each ends with a question mark. The third quatrain has three question marks. Of

the seven sentences within the poem, five of them are questions. This is so important to point out

because a question is something that doesnt resolve anything. Questioning is a way of getting

information that was previously unknown. While asking a question may lead to a conclusion, the

question itself does not conclude anything. For the speaker to be constantly asking questions

means that he feels unresolved and inconclusive about his idea of the power of Time over human

life, beauty, and love. As the poem progresses and the questioning intensifies, the readers sense

of anxiety rises with the speakers because the questions become more frequent and more

desperate. The speaker longs for an answer, but only has more questions to ask. The point of

change in tone, the volta, comes in the couplet, which ends with a period. Ending the poem with

a period, after twelve lines of questions, suggests that the speaker has come to some sort of

conclusion or answer.

The form is another way in which Shakespeare encourages the speakers questioning.

Because of the standard form of the English sonnet, the questions that the speaker asks are able

to build on top of each other. This allows the speaker to become immersed in the questions that

he is asking. What also assists the form is the structured rhyme scheme that is used. The sound of

the regular rhyme scheme, as well as the regularity of the structure, builds a solid foundation for

the speaker. It allows the speaker to be justified in his continuous questioning. This poem also

uses the regular metrical scheme, iambic pentameter. Aside from a few places, the meter of the

poem also provides a steady setting for the speakers questions. The meter of the poem is

interrupted in line five when the speaker says, O, how shall summers honey breath hold out

(5). O, at the start of the second quatrain, is the stressed syllable. This trochee is in place in
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order to emphasize the increasing intensity in the speakers questions. This same stress is seen in

lines nine and thirteen. Along with syntax and imagery, the use of O and the multiple trochees

are a way in which the tone of anxiety and worry is built up for the speaker.

The English sonnet form also sets up the reader to expect a standard building of emotion

until the volta, or turn, in the couplet. Up until this point, the speaker has been questioning and

meditating on how human life, beauty, and love could ever have a chance at surviving the

destruction that comes over time. Again, we see the first meter of the couplet change, which sets

a tone of anxiety. O, and none, (13) are both stressed syllables making this meter a spondee.

This stress is there to induce the sense of hopelessness that has been felt throughout the poem;

however, the speaker then suggests that there may be a solution to his abundance of questions.

The speaker says, O, none unless this miracle have might,/That in black ink my love may still

shine bright (13,14). Here the speakers tone changes from complete hopelessness to a glimmer

of hope. In writing, the speakers beloved and the love that the speaker has might be able to shine

and last throughout time, even though time decays and time is ultimately powerful. He grasps at

the first possibility for his beloved to resist the destruction that comes with time. The speaker

sees his black ink as something that may sustain his beloved, her beauty, and their love, but the

key word is may (14). There is still hesitation from the speaker to say that his black ink is

definitely going to withstand time. Not only is there hesitation, but also a belief that it would take

a mighty miracle for the beloved, beauty, and the speakers love to last. Although this sense of

hope is still wary, the feeling of maybe allows the reader and the speaker to decide on their

own what they believe the solution to the problem of time and life, beauty, and love is.
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According to the speaker, time is all-powerful. Shakespeare invites the reader to

contemplate the power that time has over life, because he wants the reader to be aware of the

hopelessness that surrounds love and beauty in this world if there isnt writing and language to

capture the brightness and extravagance of life, beauty, and love. Shakespeare is able to portray

the importance of writing by demonstrating the power of time, through different devices: form

and prosody, figurative language, diction, syntax, and sound. The unresolved and open-ended

conclusion of Sonnet 65 may be where Shakespeare intended to leave his speaker and the reader.

Try as we might, we are never fully capable of communicating what is deep within our hearts,

because there are no words for those feelings. Words move us and create scenes for us to live in

and long for, but we are never truly transported back into that moment of the past. As much as

the speaker in Sonnet 65 wants his beloved, the beauty, and the love to resist time with his

writing, deep down he must know, like we all know, that once a moment in time has passed it can

never be fully re-lived. Shakespeares Sonnet 65 explores the ultimate power of time, and how

the speaker and readers alike long for life, beauty, and love to escape mortality. The closest thing

the speaker and readers find to escape mortality is capturing moments of life, beauty, and love in

writing.Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. Sonnet 65. The Norton Anthology of Poetry: Shorter Fifth Edition. Ed.

Ferguson, Margaret; Salter, Mary Jo; Stallworthy, Jon. New York: New York, 2005.