![]() In lines 5-8, Shakespeare tells Time to do as it wants – but he urges it not to commit one particularly ‘heinous crime’. ![]() Here we have a view of time not unlike the ‘cormorant devouring time’ described at the beginning of Love’s Labour’s Lost. Even the phoenix – the mythical bird that was supposed to live forever, as it rose from its own ashes to live again – will be devoured, in the end, by time. In summary, Shakespeare begins Sonnet 19 by considering how time (personified as Time, as in several of the earlier Sonnets) destroys both the mighty and the mild, the strong and the gentle: the lion’s paws are blunted by time, as are the tiger’s jaws, and the earth which gives life to every living thing ends up devouring every creature (because we and other land animals end up in the ground, rotting into the earth). My love shall in my verse ever live young. Yet, do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong, Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen O! carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow, ![]() ![]() To the wide world and all her fading sweets īut I forbid thee one most heinous crime: Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet’st,Īnd do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time, Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,Īnd burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,Īnd make the earth devour her own sweet brood ![]()
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