Freshman Seminar – Introspective Paper 2 (Poem)

Terence Tan

The sixteenth sonnet amongst Shakespeare’s folio of love sonnets is typical of Shakespearean poetry

in its intellectualized argumentative thread. However, in making its argument, the poem also

features effusive language, redolent with imagery. These images, conscientiously selected,

contribute to how certain abstractions are portrayed within the poem, and hence our emotional

response toward the poem. However, before I discuss imagery, it is convenient to elucidate the gist

of the poem, if only because imagery affects the overarching argument of the sonnet. The speaker of

this sonnet is deliberating how to ensure that the subject of his adoration is remembered for

eternity. He puts forth the argument that the subject, accepted by most historians to be a young

man, should aim to immortalize his personal beauty through his children, instead of through the

speaker’s verse or through portraiture. In challenging the “tyrant, Time”, the speaker calls upon the

youth to “give away yourself” to the fairer sex; the resulting child would be a better way of

preserving the youth’s beauty than the remembrance of him in verse.

This argument may seem simple, but it is given multiple layers of complexity, as well as emotional

resonance, by the judicious use of imagery. For instance, the pursuit of immortality is construed as a

“war” against time in the first four lines. In asking the youth if he has a “mightier way” to “fortify”

himself against the progress of time, the speaker is alluding to the deliberate use of military

strength. The speaker directly addresses the tension between timelessness and mortality when he

calls upon the youth to wage “war” against “this bloody tyrant, Time”. The use of warlike imagery

renders the contrast between the speaker’s idealized pursuit of immortality and the inexorable

progress of time starker within the mind of the audience. The epic nature of this contrast helps to

heighten my emotional response to the poem. Another consequence of using such metaphorical

language is the portrayal of Time negatively as an antagonist, which evokes a feeling of animosity

and distaste within me towards this personified entity. Time is described viscerally as a “bloody

tyrant”; this deliberate choice of words brings to mind emotions of fear and anger due to my existing
mental schema of a ‘tyrant’. In placing Time vis-à-vis immortality as diametrically oppositional,

within a state of war in this narrative framework, Shakespeare succeeds in bringing forth a strong

emotional response from the audience.

In the following lines, another series of thematically similar images is introduced. As if to mitigate

the impact of the preceding imagery of war, these images are concerned with horticulture and

nature. Interestingly enough, these images are associated with a pair of opposing subjects, similar to

the Time/immortality dichotomy mentioned above. In lines four to seven, the speaker’s “barren

rhyme” is contrasted with the youth’s “maiden gardens” – young virginal women who gladly offer to

bear the youth children, the “living flowers” mentioned in line 8. Unraveling the textual meaning

behind these lines, we see that the speaker considers two means by which the youth can achieve

immortality. The first of these is through Shakespeare’s poetry, but the “barren” nature of poetry

convinces us that this would be but a sterile, dry representation of the youth’s true beauty. The

second is through reproduction; through this, the youth gains a set of progeny, “living flowers” akin

to himself and thus suitable for preserving his beauty completely. My emotional response to these

images varies accordingly. For instance, “barren” refers to what the speaker sees as the semantically

empty representation of the youth’s beauty; the emotional response is a negatively valenced one.

“Maiden gardens” make reference to young women, possibly virgins and hence still maidens, as

enclosures of fertility. In addition to the image of “living flowers” to represent descendants, the

emotions aroused in these two images are largely positive. Indeed, the use of horticultural imagery

is especially apropos to the content that is being dealt with here, as the images of verdant growth

and fertility offered in lines six and seven parallel the reproductive fertility which gives rise to the

youth’s progeny. I am pleasantly reminded of nature at its finest, intertwining seamlessly and

symbiotically with the human world, and my emotions recapitulate my thoughts.

A final theme of images arises in the last seven lines of the sonnet: that of artistic creation. Imagery

concerning writing, drawing or painting is repeated in different contexts in these lines. The different
methods by which the beauty of the youth is preserved is presented using various images: the

attempt by the speaker to preserve this beauty through verse is dismissed as a “painted counterfeit”

undertaken by Shakespeare’s “pupil pen”, and the recommendation for the youth to father children

is endorsed as extending the “lines of life…drawn by [his] own sweet skill.” The notion of poetry as

“painted” suggests that, like a piece of visual art, poetry is but a means of representing the world

around us; this is a “counterfeit” as it is but an inaccurate forgery. “Counterfeit” also connotes

fraudulence and deception in influencing our opinion of the youth’s beauty. These suggestions

impress upon the audience a feeling of relative distaste upon the poetry that Shakespeare is writing.

The speaker sees the youth’s genealogy in terms of a “line” – this deceptively simple analogy has

multiple layers of analysis. On one level, it refers to the youth’s bloodline and his progeny; on

another level, it refers to Shakespeare’s attempt to represent the youth in artificial lines of poetry.

These two contrasting interpretations are juxtaposed to achieve a feeling of dissonance within the

audience, and set the scene for the resolution to come.

Prior to the dénouement, though, another pair of contrasting images outlines the youth’s

suboptimal choices: either he subject himself to Shakespeare’s “pupil pen” or the relentless “pencil”

of Time. In describing himself as a “pupil”, the speaker describes his poetry in a self-deprecatory

fashion; we understand that he feels inadequate to describe the youth’s ephemeral beauty. In

contrast, we see the metaphor of “Time’s pencil” as boldly and ploddingly writing out the life of the

youth. The irony that Time – immutable and seemingly irreversible – is described as the activity of a

“pencil” – which is easily erased – is summarily resolved, once we note that the youth’s progeny

indeed has the capacity to symbolically erase Time through preserving the youth’s beauty. It is this

progeny that the youth is beseeched to bear when the speaker calls upon him to “live, drawn by

your own sweet skill”. The deliberate use of “drawn” as a verb calls on the audience to imagine the

youth as an artist, defying Time’s attempt to write over his beauty and sketching out a version of his

immortalized beauty – through his children – in return. This is the essence of the volta, the point of
dramatic change that occurs in the last two lines of the sonnet: the first eight lines are an

aggregation of arguments that lead to the conclusion of the last two.