Live Insides Words In Shakespeare's Sonnet 55 And 18

Live Insides Words?

Immorality, the unending of elements such as wealth and health, and perhaps the most desired one, life, seems a fantasy. Regardless of the radical pace of technological development, the humankind still owns no solutions to perpetuate life. Yet, one of the most genius poets for centuries, William Shakespeare, might have already found the answer: Poems, or more precisely, the power of written words. In Sonnet 55 and 18, Shakespeare demonstrates a serious and confident attitude that poem is the ultimate means to immortalize a young man’s life and/or beauty. By comparing words and other elements in the face of different challenges, poems, he contended, is the only eternal way in the immortalization of the young man.

In Sonnet 55, the immortalization of the young man can only be achieved by words which can endure time factors and destruction from other forces. In the first quatrain, the poet proves that the poem is stiffer than any physical, historical structures and power in battle with time. ‘Marble’ (a kind of toughest, solidest construction component), ‘glided monuments’ (historical memorials in churches) and ‘princes’ (rulers and power) are

This is achieved by putting the beautiful youth and the summer season into comparison. ‘Summer’ in the first two quatrains represents the beauty of everyone in the living word and it owns three weakness: First, ‘Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May’ (“Sonnet 18”, 2) indicates worldly beauty can be shaken and thus is fragile. Second, ‘And summer 's lease hath all too short a date’ (“Sonnet 18”, 4). The financial imaginary of summer as a rental contract that will end shortly clearly demonstrates worldly beauty is subject to decay of time. Third, ‘the eye of heaven’ (the sun) shines too hot sometimes or often dimmed by clouds. It suggests worldly beauty varies with