In some matter, the first quatrain sets both a schematic and thematic tone for the entire sonnet. In the sonnet’s opening lines, Shakespeare draws a metaphoric connection between waves reaching the shorelin

The mind’s unblemished innocence is short lived as this once newborn child begins to “Crawl to maturity, wherewith being crowned, | Crooked eclipses against is glory fight, | And Time that gave doth now his gift confound” (lines 6-8). Once again Shakespeare’s quatrain splits in two: the first half celebrates the innocence of youth and one reaching maturity while the latter half of the quatrain laments the “Crooked eclipses” which stir in one’s mind. Shakespeare then draws on the irony of time giving one the power of thought, yet this gift “confounding” one’s ideas and perceptions of the world. The innocence and simplistic world enters begins to slip away as he “crawls to maturity”- a pun that plays on how a newborn moves about. The sonnet uses the ceremony of being crowned as the defining moment of one’s maturation. One may interpret and portray the relationship between maturity and one’s crowning as chiefly pertaining to the upward movement of one’s socio-economic status. The beginning of the maturational process of the mind, however, occurs shortly before and during one’s early teenage years. Shakespeare’s use of “crowned” in the context of this sonnet, one could rationally argue, is symbolically akin to a bar mitzvah in Judaism or a Confirmation in Catholicism, the point when one b

Some topics in this essay:
William Shakespeare’s, William Wordsworth’s, Confirmation Catholicism, Shakespeare English, “crooked eclipses”, “sonnet 60”, shakespeare’s “sonnet 60”, shakespeare’s “sonnet, surrounding world, ideas perceptions, one’s ideas perceptions, wordsworth’s “ode immortality”, one’s mind, splits half, unresolved contraries, choice imagery, latter half,