First Quatrain: “Against my love shall be as I am now”
In the first quatrain, the speaker declares that because of his deep soul love, he will remain ageless—not through his physical body but through his soul’s exceptional talent at creating undying art. As he has many times before, this speaker is demonstrating the permanence of the soul over the evanescence of the body, which grows old, grotesque, and then dies.
The speaker then dramatizes the characteristics of old age: “Time’s injurious hand” will “crush” and wear out his body, and “hours” will drain his blood and fill “his brow / With lines and wrinkles.” He continues the drama in the second quatrain.
Second Quatrain: “Hath travell'd on to age's steepy night”
“When his youthful morn / / Hath travell'd on to age's steepy night”; and when “all those beauties whereof now he’s king” disappear, they will so vanish like “the treasure of his spring.” The speaker goes deeply into describing the phenomenon of growing old, emphasizing the devastation that it brings, in order to contrast the value of his ever youthful talent of encasing his eternal, undying love in his poems.
The speaker is again celebrating his ability to make art. By writing his poems, he keeps his love alive. His sonnets will not come under “Time’s injurious hand,” nor be “crush’d and o’erworn.”
Third Quatrain: “For such a time do I now fortify”
The speaker then declares that he is “fortify[ing] himself “[a]gainst confounding age’s cruel knife.” In his sonnets, he will engage his love as his flood subject, leaving a record of his love. And even though the physical subjects that populate his poems may die, the record of his love for them will not.
Again, the reader will note there is no actual person in this poem. The mention of “my lover’s life” refers to the speaker himself. He is the lover, and he as lover will die, but his “sweet love’s beauty” will not, because of his talent and ability to portray that love in poems.
The Couplet: “His beauty shall in these black lines be seen”
The beauty of his love will live on because it is captured in “these black lines.” That beauty will continue to be seen, and “shall live.” Also, his own soul’s essence shall remain “still green” as his love and its beauty continue to exist in a deathless form.
Other Shakespeare articles: Who is Shakespeare?
Sonnet Commentaries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 73, 96, 116, 126, 130, 138, 146
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