sonnet analysis and original sonnet
TRANSCRIPT
Sonia Goetschius
Gardner
English 0
13 Sep 2014
Sonnet 49 Analysis
In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 49, time devours the speaker’s reason to love: as time
denigrates love, it leaves no other purpose. The author uses distressing and emotional imagery
and metaphors in conjunction with rich and effective diction and parallels that clearly convey the
speaker’s feelings of isolation and defeat. By using images such as “cast his utmost sum,”
“scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye,” and “knowledge of mine own desert,” the sensory
imagery uses warmth as a parallel. This creates a sort of transition, as the warmth was once
“cast,” meaning it was comfortable, then a sort of paradox of being “scarcely” greeted with that
warm, “thine eye,” and finally the warmth becomes uncomfortable as he is isolated in “mine own
desert.” These parallels convey how his love mingled with time is diminishing. Another form of
parallels is the repetitive use of language having to do with the nature of an undefeatable force.
“Laws,” “lawful,” and even “settled gravity” all convey the sense of inevitable defeat, as nature
takes it’s course by mandating that love with diminish with passing time. The most powerful line,
line fourteen, imparts the final message of Shakespeare, as he loses all hope. “Why to love” is
an apostrophe, perhaps calling out to the lost lover, and it signifies how truly defeated one feels,
as it is followed by “I can allege no cause,” which on its own states that he is given up, and
cannot find purpose or reason as he suffices to time’s inevitable force. Sequentially, the author
is left with no purpose after he comes to the realization that love will move on, as time does as
well. He fears this day that his love will “convert from the thing it was,” and eventually take it’s
toll, though he knows it is the end result.
The Despised Keeper by Sonia Goetschius
They say, always live in the moment, but-Are all of these years always worth living?They are severe or enchanting, somewhatWorth remembering, yet you are forgetting.Moments you pray could last an infinity,Yet they can only stay for mere seconds;Soon to be apart of divinity,If only love were a thing of heavens.A figure of the imagination.Knowledge, happiness, and love is exchanged;People spinning under time’s flirtations,Imagination making some deranged They say, all good things must come to an end;Now I know, my time will never extend.