Please comment on the theme of "Sonnet 55" by Shakespeare.

The theme of this sonnet is actually a theme that concerns
many of Shakespeare's sonnets: that of the immortality of his beloved in the face of
time and the way that commemorating his beloved's beauty in verse creates that
immortality. Note the way that the first two lines indicate this by stating clearly that
no "gilded monuments" or statues of marble can "outlive this powerful rhyme." Statues
and such monuments that are created to commemorate the lives of famous people are fated
to be destroyed and to be "besmear'd with slutting time." However, the monument that
Shakespeare erects to his beloved in the form of this poem is
untouchable:

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Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall
burn
The living record of your
memory.

Thus this poem will
allow the speaker's beloved to "pace forth" against death and oblivion until the end of
"this world" and judgement day. The last couplet cements this overall theme of
immortality through art:

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So, till the judgment that yourself
arise, 
You live in this, and dwell in lovers'
eyes.

Shakespeare thus has
given the gift of eternal life to his beloved through giving him life "in this," the
poem that we read today, signifying the truth of his words.