The
Procreation Sonnets of Shakespeare are grouped together because they all
address the same young man, and all encourage him — with a variety
of themes and arguements — to marry and father children (hence
'procreation'). Sonnet 19 is considered by some to be the final sonnet of the
initial procreation sequence. The sonnet addresses time directly as it
allows time its great power to destroy all things in nature, but the poem
forbids time to erode the young man's fair appearance. The poem casts time
in the role of a poet holding an “antique pen”. The theme is redemption,
through poetry, of time's inevitable decay. Though there is compunction in the
implication that the young man himself will not survive time’s effects, because
redemption brought by the granting of everlasting youth is not actual, but
rather ideal or poetic.
In his Sonnet 19, Shakespeare presents the timeless theme of
Time’s mutability. As the lover apostrophizes Time, one might expect him to
address “old Time” as inconstant, for such an epithet implies time’s
changeability. But inconstant also suggests capricious, and the lover finds
time more grave than whimsical in its alterations.
With the epithet “devouring” he addresses a greedy, ravenous
hunger, a Time that is wastefully destructive. Conceding to Time its wrongs, the lover at first
appears to encourage Time to satisfy its insatiable appetite. Indeed, he
familiarly addresses Time as “thou” as he commands it harshly to “blunt, n
“make the earth devour, n “pluck,” and “burn.” Not only are the verbs “blunt,n
npluck,” and “burn” linked by assonance, but also by their plosive initial
consonants, so that the Lover’s orders sound off Time’s destructiveness as
well. Each line offers a different image of Time at work: on the lion, the
earth, the tiger, the phoenix-bird. Time is indiscriminate in its devouring. In
the second quatrain, the lover grants to Time its own will: “And do whate’er
thou wilt, swift-footed Time,” acknowledging priorly that in its fleet passage
Time does “Make glad and sorry seasons. n For the first time one sees Time in
other than a destructive capacity–in its cyclical change of seasons, some Time
does “make glad” with blooming sweets.
