Shakespeare's Sonnets: When I have seen by time's fell hand defaced

Shakespeare's Sonnets: When I have seen by time's fell hand defaced

Sonnet 64

Original Text
SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS (London: G. Eld for T. T. and sold by William Aspley, 1609): e2r.
1When I have seen by time's fell hand defaced
2The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
3When sometime lofty towers I see down razed
4And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
5When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
6Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
7And the firm soil win of the watery main,
8Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
9When I have seen such interchange of state,
10Or state it self confounded to decay,
11Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate
12That time will come and take my love away.
13    This thought is as a death which cannot choose
14    But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

Notes

2] cost] expenditure, outlay. Back to Line
4] brass] a copper-zinc alloy susceptible to tarnishing and to damage. Back to Line
8] "the ocean increasing its bulk by taking soil from the shore, and throwing up onto the shore its own waste." Back to Line
9] interchange of state] alternation in the state of something (and in the state or country itself), sometimes gaining "store" and othertimes sustaining "loss." Back to Line
10] confounded] overthrown. Back to Line
13] which] its referent is "This thought." Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1609
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2008
Rhyme
ababcdcdefefgg
Form
sonnet