Sonnet 15

Commentary

Address to a fair young man expressing the poet's love for him

Changes to the original text: full stop changed to semicolon at the end of line 4 and line 8

In the first quatrain, the poet notes that everything that grows holds its perfection for only a brief moment, that the world is but a huge stage on which things appear, and events happen under the influence of the stars.

In the second quatrain, the poet observes that men and plants exist under the same sky, which acts to make them prosper (chear, vaunt) or decline (check, decrease). Line 8 'were' is 'wear'. The meaning of the line is that things or men fallen from their prime only have a memory of their perfection (brave state), but other meanings are possible, which you may like to canvas, dear reader.

In the third quatrain, the poet sets up a situation (conceit) in which he postulates that the young man (rich in youth) is threatened by time and decay, personified as two sinister characters having a debate about how best to bring about his downfall. The verse is almost a mise en scène.

The final couplet expresses the idea that the poet himself has taken up the fight against time, busily 'ingrafting' new life where it is destroyed, thus defeating time's purpose. This could mean simply that the poet writes about the young man.