1. When I have seen by time's fell hand defaced
2. The rich proud cost of outworn buried age,
3. When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed,
4. And brass eternal slave to mortal rage.
5. When I have seen the hungry Ocean gain
6. Advantage on the Kingdom of the shore,
7. And the firm soil win of the watery main,
8. Increasing store with loss, and loss, with store;
9. When I have seen such interchange of state,
10. Or state itself confounded, to decay,
11. Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate
12. That 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.
Increasing Store With Loss
Dedication: To All (No doubt for Elizabeth’s benefit)
Oxford recounting his life experience of having witnessed the greatest waste and abuse of riches bestowed but never used and ultimate fear that his thoughts are powerless to change history as Elizabeth’s death which also can’t choose any other course. And so he reminds her that the choice is only hers.
1st Quatrain: (1-4)
Telling Elizabeth that her own conceit and anger is ravaging the monuments of her ancestry.
2nd Quatrain: (5-8)
Telling her in line 8 how the she continues to increase the store by hiding Henry and the resultant loss and contrastingly how the loss increases as a result of this "store"
3rd Quatrain: (9-12)
Telling Elizabeth of her own mortality and of the impending change of state in a new monarch
couplet (13-14),
Finishing with the reminder that death is final and with it thoughts of the unbearable consequences
Commentary:
Another sonnet about decay and renewal. This sonnet is similar to the previous sonnets in discussing what is left behind in remembrance of the person. I would hope the import and the gravity of this sonnet would convey that this is not a message to a young man needing to procreate some time in the future to continue on. This is the message of a scared poet that may see his monarch die without recognizing their mutual son. The thought of the couplet is better to endure the pain of providing the renewal of Henry than letting death decide this very choice.
As in previous sonnet this sonnet speaks of the physical things that seem permanent but don’t last.
Line 4 reflects the brass tomb (which are referred to as brasses) that is to be Elizabeth’s as metaphor for all she leaves and because of the hate and anger to which the poet has referred to in many other sonnets. She was originally entombed in such a vault. This changed as King James I erected a large white marble monument to Elizabeth in Westminster Abbey and her body was moved to it in 1606. Line 8 is a clever is clever play on words of the effects of Henry’s treatment.
Line 10 reflects that more than Elizabeth herself is at stake and is reminiscent of the references of 124 and 96. As Vendler understands things, it would appear that she sees this sonnet as a general commentary on ruin and how it takes place. She tells us that sonnet says this in two ways, summarized as state confounded to decay (Q1) and interchange of state (Q2) and comments that the poet arrives at the “naked child-likeness of Time will come and take my love away. She comments that store with loss and loss with store is Time’s purposeless playing at ruin.
I must confess at times to being completely at a loss to understand orthodox interpretations largely because they are almost always the reverse of the way I read them. When Shakespeare uses metaphor the orthodox interpretations often involve a literal interpretation. While when the poems are meant to be more literal the orthodox readings become more generalized commentary and are thought to be metaphorical. Such is the case here and Vendler’s generalized commentary on this sonnet and appears to be virtually meaningless to me.