Shakespearean Sonnet-12

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Sonnet-12

The sonnet’s position in the sequence at number twelve coincides with the 12 hours on a clock face. When the narrator observes the clock, it gives an account of speech by chiming. It makes him to see how the brave day sunk turning white as he becomes in the hideous night. This realizes him how the perfect period is fade. “When I behold the violet past prime” here “violet “refers the emblematic of the spring and new growth and “past prime “refers the fading of the perfect period. The narrator said he witness how black hair of young turning white as he becomes an old man.

In second quatrain the narrator describes how ageing happens to nature. The narrator added further by giving the example of lofty trees and summer green crops. During spring the trees covered with leaves and it gives shade to cattle and humans but heat turns the trees in to barren and alone. During harvesting time the summer’s green like wheat and barley cut and bound into bundles which were carried to the threshing barn on a bier. “Bier” is also used for carrying the coffin at a funeral so it symbolically refers when people turns old they were taken away by time.

“Then of thy beauty do I question make” this all events begin the narrator to question the reality of fair lord’s beauty because fair lord also will decline and decay like all things. Now the narrator realize even sweet and beautiful things never left forever because the time has power to change everything. “And die as fast as they see others grow” the line refers in this world the only continuous process is mutation as one thing dies; another thing grows to replace it. This line also refers the jealous of people who only witness the growth of others and fail to live their life.

The couplet describes how to save human beauty against the power of time. There is no defence against time and death which carrying a scythe but the only way he can fight against time is by breeding and making a copy of him.

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