Sonnet 60 by William Shakespeare

First published: 1609, in Sonnets

Type of poem: Sonnet

The Poem

Sonnet 60, like all sonnets, is a fourteen-line poem of one stanza, rhymed according to a traditional scheme. The sonnet is one of 154 untitled sonnets by William Shakespeare, each of which adheres to the form of what is referred to as the English, or Shakespearean, sonnet.

The first quatrain consists of an extended simile, comparing the passage of human life to the onward movement of waves rushing to the seashore. Each wave pushes the one in front of it, and is in turn pushed by the one that follows it. Each following the other in close succession, the waves struggle forward.

The second quatrain introduces a new thought, more directly relating the passage of time to human life. The newborn baby, once it has seen the vast light of day, quickly begins to crawl. This is the first stage in its growth to manhood. Once the human being is “crowned,” however—that is, attains in adulthood its full stature as a royal king, the summit of the natural order—he is not allowed to rest and enjoy his status. The heavenly bodies, which have ruled his destiny since the day he was born, conspire against him to extinguish his glory. The same process that resulted in the gift of birth and growth is now responsible for change and decay.

The third quatrain develops the idea of time as destroyer, highlighting three lethal actions that time performs. First, time tears. It “doth transfix the flourish set on youth,” which means that it pierces through the attractive outward appearance, the flower, of youth. Second, time imprints itself; it creates furrows (“delves the parallels”) in the brow of the beautiful. Third, time is all-devouring. It consumes the most valuable and most prized things that nature produces. Nothing at all can stand against time, whose scythe will mow down everything.

It seems inevitable that time will be victorious, but in the final couplet the poet attempts to salvage what he can. He believes that at least one thing can survive the onslaught of time. In future times, his verse will “stand,” if all else has fallen. At the same time, the poet reveals what has prompted his meditation on the destructive nature of time: his love for the youthful beauty of his friend. The poet’s verse will always ring out in praise of this beauty, in spite of the devastation wrought by the “cruel hand” of time.

Forms and Devices

The frequent occurrence of s sounds in the first two lines (on no fewer than seven occasions) suggests the sound of the incoming waves as they break on the shore. The final two s sounds, in “minutes hasten,” are placed closer together than the others, and this suggests the increasing speed and urgency of the passage of time.

The second quatrain is remarkable because it fuses three distinct sets of images: child, sun, and king. “Nativity” is at once the birth of a child and the rising of the morning sun. The child that “Crawls to maturity” is also the ascending sun, and “crowned” suggests at once a king and the sun at its zenith in the sky. This thought would have come easily to an Elizabethan mind, at home with the idea of an intricate set of correspondences between the microcosmic world of man and the macrocosmic heavens. The same image occurs in Sonnet 33 and Shakespeare’s play Richard II (c. 1595-1596).

At this point of maximum strength and power, the man-king-sun faces an assault on his position, as “Crookéd eclipses ‘gainst his glory fight.” “Crookéd” suggests the plotting of rivals to usurp his crown; “eclipses” is an astrological reference, suggesting an unfavorable aspect in the heavens that will bring about the inevitable downfall of the man-king, as well as ensuring the downward passage of the sun as it loses its glory over the western horizon. “Crawls” (line 6) and “Crookéd” (line 7) are given added emphasis by the trochee at the beginning of each line and by alliteration, which also links them both to “crowned” at the end of line 6. The rising and falling rhythm of the final line of this quatrain, “And time that gave, doth now his gift confound,” sums up the idea conveyed in the first three lines.

The third quatrain is introduced by a trochee, “Time doth,” which gives notice that time is to be the direct subject of this part of the sonnet. Another trochee in the first foot of line 11 emphasizes the consuming aspect of time, and Shakespeare again makes use of a trochaic foot, “Praising,” in the first foot of the second line of the couplet. This paves the way for the defiant flourish with which the sonnet ends. The fact that the phrase “Praising thy worth” is followed by a caesura slows the line down and leaves this phrase echoing in the reader’s mind, a magnificent counterpoint to the “cruel hand” of time that the sonnet has labored to convey. Labored is the appropriate word here, since the struggle of all sublunary things depicted in this sonnet is hard and unrelenting. Images of struggle begin in the first quatrain, as the waves “toil” and “contend” with each other. The slow struggle of the man upward is suggested by the caesura placed after “Crawls to maturity,” and this struggle lasts far longer than his brief moment of glory, which dissolves after another fight.