previous poem in the collection Shakespeare's Sonnets: Against my love shall be as I am now next poem in the collection Shakespeare's Sonnets: Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea

Notes

2] cost] expenditure, outlay.

4] brass] a copper-zinc alloy susceptible to tarnishing and to damage.

8] "the ocean increasing its bulk by taking soil from the shore, and throwing up onto the shore its own waste."

9] interchange of state] alternation in the state of something (and in the state or country itself), sometimes gaining "store" and othertimes sustaining "loss."

10] confounded] overthrown.

13] which] its referent is "This thought."

Other poems by William Shakespeare