Sonnet 19 by William Shakespeare

First published: 1609, in Sonnets

Type of poem: Sonnet

The Poem

William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 19 is a traditional English sonnet (traditional because Shakespeare made it so), consisting of a single stanza of fourteen lines, rhymed according to a standard format. Like the other 153 sonnets by Shakespeare, Sonnet 19 has no title.

In the first quatrain, the poet addresses time as a devourer, handing out a series of defiant invitations to time to perform its most destructive acts. First, time is instructed to “blunt” the “lion’s paws,” which gives the reader an image of enormous strength reduced to impotence. In line 2, the poet moves from the particular to the general, invoking time as a bully who forces the earth, seen as the universal mother, to consume all her beloved offspring. Line 3 echoes line 1. It gives another image of the strongest of nature’s creatures, this time the tiger, reduced to weakness. Time, seen as a fierce aggressor, will pluck out its teeth. No gentle decline into age here. In line 4, the poet moves to the mythological realm. He tells time to wreak its havoc by burning the “long-lived phoenix.” The phoenix was a mythical bird that supposedly lived for five hundred years (or a thousand years, according to some versions) before being consumed in fire. The phoenix was also said to rise from its own ashes, but that is not a meaning that the poet chooses to develop here. The final phrase in the line, “in her blood,” is a hunting term that refers to an animal in the full vigor of life.

The second quatrain begins with a fifth invitation to time, couched in general rather than specific terms: “Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet’st.” This takes the invocation of time’s destructive power to a more refined level, because it alludes to the human emotional response to the hurried passage of time: Seasons of gladness and seasons of sorrow form part of an ever-recurring cycle. Lines 6 and 7 seem to continue the poet’s willingness to allow time full sway to do whatever it wants wherever it chooses.

In line 8, however, the argument begins to turn. Having built up a considerable sense of momentum, the poet checks it by announcing that there is one limit he wishes to place on time. It transpires that all the concessions the poet has made to time in lines 1 through 7 are one side of a bargain the poet wishes to strike. The terms are now forcefully announced, as the poet attempts to establish his authority over time. He forbids time, with its “antique pen,” to make furrows on the brow of his beloved. The friend must be allowed to go through life untouched (“untainted”) by the passage of time. Anything less would be a crime, because the lover is an exceptional being who must represent to future ages the pattern of true beauty—an eternal beauty that stands outside the domain of time.

In the final couplet, however, the poet seems to acknowledge the futility of his demand, yet he remains defiant. In spite of the wrongs that time inflicts, the poet’s friend will forever remain young because he will live in the poet’s verse.

Forms and Devices

The sonnet is a highly concentrated work of art in which the poet must develop and resolve his theme within the strict confines of the sonnet form. Sonnet 19, like all Shakespeare’s sonnets, follows a standard pattern. It consists of three quatrains and a concluding couplet, and it follows the rhyme scheme abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

The meaning of the sonnet is reinforced by the variations Shakespeare makes in the meter. This takes the form of a subtle counterpoint between the regular metrical base, which is iambic pentameter, and the spoken rhythm—what one actually hears when the sonnet is read. For example, in the first quatrain, the theme of the destructiveness of time is brought out more forcefully by a series of metrical inversions.

In the third foot in the first line (“blunt thou”), a trochee is substituted for an iamb, resulting in a strong stress falling on the first syllable. This gives “blunt” a much stronger impact than it would otherwise have, especially as the rest of the line follows a regular iambic rhythm. In line two, the last foot is a spondee rather than an iamb, resulting in two heavy stresses on “sweet brood.” The emphasis on the “sweetness of what time destroys” makes the work of time seem even more harsh. Line 3 is a very irregular line, echoing the turbulence of the sense. There is a metrical inversion in the first foot (it is trochaic, not iambic) that serves to highlight the word “Pluck.” This recalls, through assonance, the “blunt” of line 1. Both of these are forceful words that express the way in which time assaults the natural world. The second foot of line 3 is a spondee, and the assonance contained in “keen teeth” adds to its prominent impact in the line. The fourth foot of this line is also a spondee, making the “fierce tiger” very fierce indeed. Line 3 in particular, with its high number of stressed syllables, brings out the idea of time as an aggressive, fearsome warrior going to battle against all living things.

The meter of the second quatrain is more regular than the first. The speedy passage of the end of line 5 (“as thou fleet’st”) echoes the sense, and this is emphasized again by the heavy stress on “swift” in line 6. In the third quatrain, the turbulent rhythm and harsh consonants of the earlier part of the sonnet vanish as the poet turns his attention to the friend. The smooth and regular iambic rhythm of line 12, for example, “For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men,” suggests the perfection of the friend.

Time makes a forceful reappearance in the first line of the couplet, with the spondee, “old Time,” prominently positioned immediately before the caesura. This makes the triumph of the last line, in which the poet obtains his victory through the power of his pen (a contrast to the seemingly all-powerful “antique pen” of time), all the more striking and effective.