Shakespeare's sonnet
How plainly here the poet speaks! In the enormous plenitude of his conceptions which have not as yet found a human sphere to vent themselves, the thought occupies him that his mind as well as his body will grow old, that the exuberance, or beauty, of his intellect, now gazed on with so much admiration, the youthful freshness of his intellectual powers, which now afford him such delight, will gradually decay, some day cease to be, and that, in the field of his intellectual beauty, time will dig deep trenches. If he should then be asked where all his beauty lies, where all the treasure of his lusty days, and he be forced to reply that they were in his own, then, deep-sunken (mind's) eyes, it would be an all-devouring shame, and thriftless praise. But, how much the more would the use of his beauty praise deserve, if he could answer: "This fair child of mine shall sum up my account, and make my old, i. e. late excuse." He m
In an indirect discourse, the young man that Shakespeare refers to, at the age of forty, has two possible answers to the question, "Where lies thy beauty and Where all the treasure of thy lusty days? These questions are answered by the lines, "Within my own deep-sunken eyes and This fair child is of mine. . . ". These answers evoke a two- part judgement, one from the world, one from the speaker. Should the young man give the second answer, he would deserve more praise from the world, first of all; then the speaker adds a judgement perhaps more persuasive, because of its narcissistic interest to the young man (repeating the subjunctive were to parallel the world_s earlier judgement): This were to be made. Shakespeare experiments here with a "bottom-heavy" structure, in which the alternative scenarios of young man_s answer / others_ judgements are linked powerfully together by parallelism and chaismus: say, were shame, pr
Some common words found in the essay are:
, fair child, fair child mine, social morality, child mine, world speaker, alternative scenarios, own deep-sunken, lusty days,
Approximate Word count = 622
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)
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