Like Sonnet 2, Sonnet 12 has a similar theme of time leading to a barren future. Through the first quatrain, the speaker dicusses how he has seen time turn things ugly that were once young and glorious. In the second quatrain, the speaker continues with his comments about how time makes all beauty fades, even making the comparison between the hauling of summer crops to an old man being carried off to his grave. The third quatrain is then directed directly at the boy. The speaker wonders outloud whether the boy’s beauty, like the beauty of nature, will also be destroyed over time. The couplet ends the sonnet by stating that there is no way to fight time – except, of course, by having children so that when you are gone, your offspring lives on. The speaker definitely gives this sonnet a negative tone, using words like “hideous,” “barren,” and “wastes.” I believe that he does this on purpose, in order to make the boy scared on time and death, and want to have children in order to live on.
No comments:
Post a Comment