Sonnet 64
When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
time
mortality
grief
loss
When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
What It Means
Shakespeare has watched great things get destroyed by time — rich shores eaten by the ocean, kingdoms crumbling. Everything passes. The thought leads to a specific grief: if this is what time does to everything, it will do the same to the person he loves. And then what? Nothing to be done — but the anticipation of the loss is already the loss. The final couplet is remarkably bleak: he cries thinking about something that hasn't happened yet.
Context
Part of the Fair Youth sequence. Sonnet 64's imagery of eroding coastlines and fallen kingdoms is more geopolitical than most of the sequence.
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