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William ShakespeareSonnet 60
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1609A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Waves and the Pebbled Shore
The thematic structure of Sonnet 60 is emphasized by three distinct imageries. The first quatrain contains sea-imagery and reflects the repetitive motion of waves, showing how human minutes keep ticking and ending. The waves symbolize the relentless and monotonous nature of moments, each followed by another. While this surplus of minutes may give the illusion that time is endless, the poet demolishes that idea from the get-go with the mention of the pebbled shore, as well as the use of the word “make” (Line 1). The waves are not rushing or dancing to the shore, but make toward it, evoking the idea of work and struggle.
The shore is neither smooth nor sandy but filled with pebbles and rocks. The rocky shore is a symbol of time and death. Much like the waves are destined to crash and shatter against the rocks, human minutes must break against the rock of mortality. In other words, while the passage of minutes may seem endless and repetitive, the paradox is that humans run out of minutes in the blink of an eye.
The Sun
The second imagery used in the sonnet is the imagery of the sun on its daily rounds. The sun is symbolic of an individual and a day in the individual’s lifespan. Additionally, the sun could also symbolize Jesus, the son of God. In Christian tradition, comparing Christ to the sun was a common conceit, as it was in literature and art of the 16th and 17th centuries. The biblical allusion adds to the pathos of youth being pierced and eclipsed in its prime. Much like the rising sun over the sea seems to be bathed in light, “nativity” (Line 5) is a radiant expanse.
Time flows slowly in the first part of the sun’s life, as it crawls to youth, indicating that humans take a long time to grow up and achieve their peak. Once the sun is crowned at its high noon, its head wreathed by rays of light, time speeds up in its evil plan. Thus, the poet stresses that the sun’s peak is the most short-lived part of the day. Now, crooked eclipses swiftly deface the sun’s mien, with the eclipses symbolizing old age, disease, and struggle.
The Scythe
In the third quatrain, the poet uses agricultural imagery to depict yet another facet of the relationship between the individual and time. Time is at its cruelest in this section, because it is both nurturer and destroyer, a cruel parent in the fashion of the Greek god Kronos, the titan who ate his own children. While time brings beauty to bloom, at the very moment of flourish it uses its agricultural tool to drag furrows in the perfect landscape.
This tool morphs into the scythe, which consists of a sharp, long curved blade at the end of a pole. The scythe was, and is still, used to cull or harvest ripe crop. In the sonnet, it symbolizes time cutting down the ripe crop of youth through aging and death. Associated with the grim reaper, the scythe can also be read as an example of metonymy in the sonnet; metonymy is a literary device where a related idea or thing stands in for a larger concept. Here, the scythe is a metonym for death as the grim reaper. The scythe of time and death is relentless and indiscriminate, since “nothing stands but for his scythe to mow” (Line 12), and no plant or living thing can escape being mowed or cut down by its sharp arc.
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By William Shakespeare
