Sonnet 55
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
immortality
poetry
time
memory
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lover's eyes.
What It Means
Shakespeare makes his most confident claim about the power of poetry. Not marble, not gold, not bronze — none of these survive as long as verse. The poem will outlast wars, the 'sluttish' pace of time, and the erasure of history. The young man will be remembered by future generations reading this poem while statues crumble to dust around them. It's the most aggressive version of the immortality claim.
Context
Part of the Fair Youth sequence. Sonnet 55 is often grouped with Sonnet 18 as the clearest statements of poetry's power to immortalize.
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