Sonnet 68
1. Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,
2. When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,
3. Before the bastard signs of fair were born,
4. Or durst inhabit on a living brow;
5. Before the golden tresses of the dead,
6. The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,
7. To live a second life on second head,
8. Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay:
9. In him those holy antique hours are seen,
10. Without all ornament, itself and true,
11. Making no summer of another's green,
12. Robbing no old to dress his beauty new,
13. And him as for a map doth Nature store,
14. To show false Art what beauty was of yore.
Doth Nature Store
Dedication: To All (Most likely for Elizabeth’s benefit)
Expressing that in Henry’s aging face a story can be read of about the promise of renewal not to be. That without his promise Henry is but an artifact (a store) and metaphorical map of how things were to be and of the renewing force Henry would have bestowed.
1st Quatrain: (1-4)
Telling metaphorically how upon Henry's check is written a story of both Elizabeth age. A story of him (beauty) living and dying unrecognized and again alluding to his identity couched in terms of flowers. Alluding to Henry's being made a bastard by the concealment of their marriage and Henry's false identity and his birth. Reminding her this story is embodied in Henry (a living brow).
2nd Quatrain: (5-8)
Telling Elizabeth that prior to this decision of hers which has destroyed the rights of her ancestors there was the chance to live a second life through Henry.
3rd Quatrain: (9-12)
Chiding her for taking pleasure from Henry's concealment. Telling her that in Henry can be seen her great lineage. Explaining that Henry is the pure manifestation of his royal self without the ornamentation. Not renewing her.
couplet (13-14),
Telling of Henry being held in store and his beauty now merely a superficial show that only harkens back to his true beauty (his right of succession) now forgotten.
Commentary:
Returning to writing Elizabeth and reminding her that recorded in her son is a story of both their demise. Many of the sonnets deal with decay and renewal this one really is just about the decay as Oxford has effectively lost hope in the renewal as will be seen shortly before he recovers from this depression to continue his onslaught of argument on Henry’s behalf until likely the 1601 Rebellion as mentioned and Henry’s imprisonment. After which he writes his elegy of Elizabeth in the Phoenix and the Turtle as mentioned. Line 12 a reference to Elizabeth selfishness and unwillingness to take anything from herself to provide for Henry’s succession. The couplet accuses Elizabeth of showing false Art herself as likely Virgin Queen and certainly the falsity of not being a mother, as she is the frequent recipient of Art as metaphor for herself. Tough it could and probably does represent Henry as well. Oxford uses a combination of the metaphors previously discussed in the 3rd quatrain and couplet, ornament, summer’s renewal, the map. This sonnet very likely in a series with 67, thus the two would appear in reversed order here as mentioned previously.
This sonnet is important because while metaphorical of course it very specifically speaks of Henry as other entity and associates him with terminology for which we are to understand him as represented by, specifically that of flowers, beauty, and store. It also provides the uniquely the obvious mention of the bastard signs associated with something much more closely and obviously representing Henry than previously done, though previously it appears in 127 with “beauty slandered with a bastard’s shame” and 124 with “fortune’s bastard be unfathered”.
This sonnet is in series with 67 and is generally understood as the poet criticizing his cultural period instead of understanding it for the clear message it is to the subject of the waste of Henry and the missed opportunity to renew and “To live a second life on second head” as in line 7. Specifically Stephen Booth reflects on the relationship between this sonnet and 127 which presumably is the last of the “Dark Lady” sonnets. While I agree that Booth is making a correct connection to the bastard’s shame of sonnet 127, Booth as usual fails to understand anything close to the true nature of this sonnet or its meaning.
Vendler theorizes that the store is used “because the word contains the letters making up rose.” She also posits that it is the present that is indicted as a grisly grave-robber. And that the the poem contains a comparison of the young man to a map rather than to a statue “suggests that the whole rich three-dimensional being of days outworn can be stored in him only in a schematic and flat way”.
It also as generally understood unfortunately as a sonnet considerably lesser quality which I believe is completely a result of the lack of understanding of what should be a rather transparent message.