Sonnet 63

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Shakespeare. Sonnet 1

«Against my love shall be, as I am now,
With Time’s injurious hand crush’d and o’er-worn». 

References to the young man’s future are signs of the poet’s fear that love cannot defend against time.

Sonnet 63
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Against my love shall be, as I am now,
With Time’s injurious hand crush’d and o’er-worn;
When hours have drain’d his blood and fill’d his brow
With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn
Hath travell’d on to age’s steepy night,
And all those beauties whereof now he’s king
Are vanishing or vanish’d out of sight,
Stealing away the treasure of his spring;
For such a time do I now fortify
Against confounding age’s cruel knife,
That he shall never cut from memory
My sweet love’s beauty, though my lover’s life:
His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
And they shall live, and he in them still green.

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The youth could die — “When hours have drained his blood” — and so could his beauty — “And all those beauties whereof now he’s king / Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight” — but when the youth is as agedas the poet, the youth’s former good looks will be preserved in the poet’s verse.

“Confounding age’s cruel knife,” which recalls Sonnet 60’s “And Time that gave doth now his gift confound,” is no match against the poet’s sonnets, “these black lines” in which the young man will forever live “still green.”

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Credits

English audio from YouTube Channel Socratica

Summary from Cliffsnotes.com

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