Shakespeare’s sonnet form is very unique. Most of his sonnets use ten syllables per line and fourteen lines with a rhyme couplet at the last two lines. His pattern is usually a b a b c d c d e f e f g g. Shakespeare’s sonnets focus on the elements of love, death, time, and other elements that help explain the sonnet in greater detail. A well know myth is that sonnets 1 to 126 were addressed to a young man and that sonnets 127 to 152 were written to a “Dark Mysterious Lady” (Adventures in English Literature 136).

“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 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.

And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand

The rich proud cost of outworn buried age:

Sonnet 60 is explaining “the nature of time” (SparkNotes: Shakespeare’s Sonnets 1) as it goes through the life of a human. Time begins with the “Nativity” or the beginning/birth of a person’s life. Then a person matures when they “crawl to maturity”. And finally Time’s “cruel hand” takes that person’s life away.

Are vanishing or vanish’d out of sight

Some topics in this essay:
Shakespeare’s Sonnets, English Literature, Steepy Night, Renaissance Shakespeare, Shakespeare Shakespeare, , sonnet 64, lines 9, love death, elements love death, 9 12 explains, love death elements, lines 5 8, elements love, 9 12, lines 5, death elements, 12 explains, lines 13, lines 9 12, sonnet 60,