Sonnet 60

Shakespeare uses a series of metaphors to explore one of the central riddles of existence: how one escapes the vagaries of time and death. The tone of the sonnet is melancholy, as if the speaker is resigned to mortality and the forward march of time. The poem opens with the intriguing phrase “like as” (Line 1), suggesting what is to follow is a simile. Readers might wonder about the double comparative “like” and “as” when either word alone would be sufficient. Shakespeare cleverly uses both to maintain the iambic (five stresses) pentameter of his line, ensuring it has the extra stress of “like.” But that is not the only reason for the particular phrasing. By using both “like” and “as,” the poet introduces the theme of life-as-repetition, which is central in the poem. The nearly interchangeable words foreshadow the interchangeable nature of waves and minutes, the dominant image of the first four lines of the sonnet.

The poet chooses the image of waves crashing against the shore to describe the progress of moments; what makes this image especially powerful is its repetitive motion. Waves swell and die, one after the other. In the sea of time, moments too climax and wither. The metaphor of waves as minutes establishes that the passage of time is natural. Painful as it may be, the flow of time is as inevitable as any natural phenomenon. The shore is described as “pebbled” (Line 1) rather than sandy or pleasant, which evokes the idea that life can be rocky and harsh. The line “our minutes hasten to an end” (Line 2) introduces a note of desperate urgency in the poem. Time is running out, no matter how hard one tries to hold on to it. The expression “sequent toil” (Line 4) can be understood as sequential, relentless work. Not only is time in short supply, but the rhythm of life is tough and repetitive.

The poet switches metaphors in the next four lines, now using the image of the rising sun to describe a human’s rise and fall. There is also a subtle shift in the address: While the first four lines describe the general human condition, these next set of lines refer to the waning of youth in particular. The infant sun crawls to the prime of youth and is “crown’d” (Line 6) with light and beauty. Shakespeare’s unique phrase “nativity, that is the main of light” (Line 5) is particularly interesting here, since “main” (Line 5) refers to an expanse. Childhood and youth are thus a period awash in light; yet the idea of an expanse, used often for the sea, harks back to the relentless movement of the waves. Thus, even when describing the radiance of childhood, the speaker is always aware of its ephemerality.

The reference to a crown evokes the image of the sun in full bloom, radiating its crownlike rays. This moment of coronation is a metaphor for youth’s apogee, but the moment is strikingly followed by the inevitability of “crooked eclipses” (Line 7) casting their shadow on the sun’s glory. Eclipses were considered a bad omen in Shakespeare’s time; thus, the coming of the eclipse is doubly negative in that it takes away the sun’s light and foreshadows something terrible. The word “crooked” (Line 7) is a reference to old age, in which the perfect lines of youth start losing symmetry. The irony here is that the coronation and the fight, the blooming and the crooked eclipse go hand in hand. Here, Shakespeare draws on the common idiom of the flower that blooms briefly. The bittersweet reality is that the most beautiful period of the flower’s life—its blooming—is short-lived. Time, personified here, now acts as a fickle and cruel master. It takes away the very gifts of youth and beauty it bestowed.

In the next four lines of the sonnet, the poet continues the extended metaphor of time as an arbitrary, cruel authority figure. He first imagines time as a farmer who nurtures their crop—which is youth and beauty—to “flourish” (Line 9). Once the crop is in bloom and has been harvested, time plants “parallels” (Line 10) on youth’s brow, which is to say it begins to destroy the smooth, unblemished crop through wrinkles or lines of age. The next image is that of time as a devourer, perhaps like Kronos from Greek mythology, the titan who ate his own children. Time “feeds on” (Line 11) or consumes even the rarest of nature’s truth, or the best and purest beings of nature. In Line 12, the word “scythe” evokes the familiar image of time as interchangeable with death, the grim reaper come to collect souls. His curved sickle or scythe mows down all manner of crops. Death is thus inevitable.

In the concluding two lines, the poet puts a spin on everything that has gone before. This twist or flourish is the volta, or the turn typical to the sonnet form, a line of thought that amplifies, opposes, or diversifies the poem’s preceding argument. Now the poet addresses someone directly, referring to them as “thy” (Line 14); this is the fair youth, the muse to whom many of Shakespeare’s sonnets were dedicated. The poem grows even more specific, fixing the particular problem of mortality in the context of the poet’s life and affections.

Fittingly, the poem’s speaker, till now a fatalist and an observer of time’s ravages, takes control of his life. He cannot halt the flow of time, but he can arrest the youth’s beauty through his poetry. Thus, his art, which is immortal, can act as a bulwark against time’s relentless waves. Through the idea of the poet’s writing hand resisting the cruel hand of time, Shakespeare radically undoes the fatalism of all his preceding lines in the sonnet. The message now is that of hope and resilience instead of resignation and melancholy.