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Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Nativity, once in the main of light, Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd, Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight, And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
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- Structure
- Poetic Techniques
- Detailed Analysis
The speaker spends the majority of the poem using personificationto describe time as a force that gives and then takes away. It chooses to destroy all of that which it once created. It leads even the best of nature into destruction, corrupting a pure brow with wrinkles. In the last lines, the speaker says that no matter what time tries to do his wr...
‘Sonnet 60’ by William Shakespeare is a fourteen-line poem that is contained within one stanza, in the form that has become synonymous with the poet’s name. The English or Shakespearean sonnet (sometimes also known as the Elizabethan) is made up of three quatrains, or sets of four lines, and one concluding couplet, or set of two rhyming lines. The ...
Shakespeare makes use of several poetic techniques in ‘Sonnet 60’. These include but are not limited to alliteration, personification, and enjambment. The first of these, alliteration, is the use of the same sound at the beginning of multiple words. For example, “Crawls,” “crowned,” and “crooked” in lines six and seven as well as “glory” and “gift”...
Lines 1-4
In the first lines of ‘Sonnet 60,’ the speaker begins with a clear and beautiful description of time. He uses a metaphorto compare the progression of time to the movement of waves “towards the pebbled shore”. Life is fast and there is never enough time to do everything that one wants to, these lines allude to. The moments move as the waves do, in and out, one replacing the next. Their efforts together move one’s life forward towards its inevitable conclusion.
Lines 5-8
In the next four lines of ‘Sonnet 60,’ the speaker describes “Nativity” and everything that has ever been born. None of it stays young or new forever. It all “Crawls” through time to “maturity” where it finds its light and peak. There are numerous obstacles to that peak that all living beings face. There are “Crooked eclipses” that try to fight against “his glory”. Time, which was once a friend carrying one on towards the penultimate moments of their life becomes an adversary. It takes its gi...
Lines 9-14
In the third quatrain of ‘Sonnet 60,’ the speaker adds that it is time’s job to destroy the beauty of youth that it once bestowed and create wrinkles on “beauty’s brow”. The perfect smoothness of youth is corrupted by “parallels”. Time even “Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,” the most beautiful things in nature fall victim to the power of time. There is nothing it won’t touch with its “scythe”. These lines use imageryto refer to the figure of death as a grim reaper. In the last two lin...
- Female
- October 9, 1995
- Poetry Analyst And Editor
The Full Text of “Sonnet 60: Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore”. 1 Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore, 2 So do our minutes hasten to their end; 3 Each changing place with that which goes before, 4 In sequent toil all forwards do contend. 5 Nativity, once in the main of light,
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Nativity, once in the main of light, Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d, Crooked eclipses ‘gainst his glory fight, And Time that gave doth now his gift ...
So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Nativity, once in the main of light, Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d, Crooked elipses ’gainst his glory fight, And Time that gave doth now his gift confound. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
Sep 11, 2017 · A reading of a classic Shakespeare sonnet. Widely regarded as one of the finest of all the Sonnets, Sonnet 60, beginning ‘Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, / So do our minutes hasten to their end’, is a meditation on mortality, with Shakespeare once again proposing that his poetry about the Fair Youth will secure the young man’s immortality.
So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Nativity, once in the main of light, Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d, Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight, And Time that gave doth now his gift confound. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
