Sonnet 65
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
mortality
time
poetry
beauty
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
What It Means
Nothing is strong enough to resist time. Not metal, not rock, not ocean, not flowers. If none of these can stop time's decay, what hope does 'beauty's legacy' have? There is only one answer: the 'miracle' of black ink. The poem is the miracle. Verse holds what the world cannot. It's a simpler, more desperate version of the immortality argument — not a confident claim but a question with a single possible answer.
Context
Part of the Fair Youth sequence. Sonnet 65 works as a complement to Sonnet 64 — together they make one of the most pessimistic pairs about mortality in the sequence.
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