Monday, February 29, 2016

What is the main theme of "Sonnet 19"? Discuss.

In Sonnet 19, the main theme is the poet is challenging
the concept of Time while bargaining with the personified Time. While Time has a way of
changing everything it touches, the poet is as if giving Time permission to destruct or
destroy or mutate anything in its path. However, the poet asks Time to not touch his
friend or loved one with the antique pen of Time:


readability="8">

But I forbid thee one most heinous
crime:
O, carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow,
Nor draw no
lines there with thine antique
pen;



While the poet is trying
to bargain with Time in reference to not touching his friend or loved one with old age
and wrinkles, the poet has a recourse if Time should be so unkind. The poet will write
his friend's youthful features into a poem which captures his friend as immortal. Yes,
the poet will assure his friend's or love's youthfulness upon the pages of his poem. He
assures that future generations shall witness his friend's forever beauty that comes
with youthfulness.


Time cannot touch his friend's youtfhful
beauty on the pages of the poem. The poet's friend's beauty will forever remain youthful
on the pages of his eternal verse:


readability="8">

Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy
wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live
young.


No comments:

Post a Comment

What is the meaning of the 4th stanza of Eliot's Preludes, especially the lines "I am moved by fancies...Infinitely suffering thing".

A century old this year, T.S. Eliot's Preludes raises the curtain on his great modernist masterpieces, The Love...