每日一首Sonnet (65)

LXV

1. Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
2. But sad mortality o'ersways their power,
3. How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
4. Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
5. O! how shall summer's honey breath hold out,
6. Against the wrackful siege of battering days,
7. When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
8. Nor gates of steel so strong but Time decays?
9. O fearful meditation! where, alack,
10. Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
11. Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
12. Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
13. O! none, unless this miracle have might,
14. That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

Commentary:
Thetheme of mortality is continued, with thesame items of earthly longevity and stability quoted as in theprecedingsonnet - brass, stone (towers), earth , and the all hungry but mortalocean.Their stability is mere sham and their strength a complete illusion.How,in all this wasteful ruin, may such a fragile thing as beauty survive?Itseems indeed to be an impossibility. Yet there is one hope, a slenderchance,that the immortality of verse will hold out against the advancingdestructionof time and that the youth's ever young beauty will be preserved, bysomemiracle, in the mortal words that the poet writes.
Althoughthis is a recurrent theme in the sonnets,as for example in 18, where we are assured that:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee
here the sense of threatened personal loss and the invincibility andinevitabilityof time's advancing destruction make the remedy more poignant and lessassured.Perhaps words also will be swept aside in the general wrack. Perhapstheink will not be strong enough to outshine death, and its blackness willturn out to be symbolic of darkness to come.
Whatever the outcome, we are left with a sense of sorrow and theawfulnessof impending doom for the youth and for all humanity.
Note:
1.brass, stone, are the paradigms oflong lasting substances. earth and boundlesssea are alsolong lasting, and superior in that they are of near boundless extent.Theseare all things which ought by their nature to be capable of holding outagainst mortality.

2.sad mortality = mortality which causessadness; solemn, ugly, hideous mortality.
o'ersways their power = has greater power thanthey have. 'To exercisesway over' is to rule over. The term is not much used nowadays in thissense(OED.n.5.) but is found in such phrases as 'to hold sway over'. tooverswayis to be superior to one who already holds sway.

3. rageis used in two previous sonnetsin a similar context, to exemplify the blind fury of Time'sdestructiveness.
And barren rage of death's eternal cold? 13.
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; 64.
It is suggestive of the madness of an unreasoning tyrant, or theirrationalityof someone who has gone berserk.
hold a plea - hear a plea, as in a court of law, where anaction mightbe advanced for a stay of execution. SB thinks it is a misapplied term,the precise meaning being '"to try an action" - i.e. to havejurisdiction,to be judge' (SB p.246.n.3.) OED 1.b. does indeed give the definition'totry an action' with various examples, e.g.
1570–6 Lambarde Peramb.Kent (1826) 182 Having a court...inwhich they hold plea of all causes and actions, reall and personall,civilland criminall.
But one suspects that the meaning is the more general one of sustainingor defending a plea, which the average layman might take it to be. OEDalsogives under "hold" (3.d.) the meaning: "To sustain, bear,endure, ‘stand’ (some treatment)". with the following examples:
1606 W. Crawshaw Romish Forgeries Aija,If the matter willnot hold plea, and if my proofe be not substantiall. 1607Shakes. Cor. iii. ii. 80 Now humble as theripest Mulberry, Thatwill not hold the handling.
The fact that the first example contains the phrase 'hold plea' worksinfavour of taking a more general sense of the phrase, rather than therestrictedone given as OED.1.b. The imagery is that of a timorous subjectdefendingan action before an enraged and absolute judge who is clearly not goingto take any notice of the plea offered.

4. action- the legal terminology continues.The legal action undertaken by beauty to prevent destruction is no moreeffective than a flower attempting to stop the march of time. Themetaphorranges beyond the merely legalistic, and sets up the image of theflowerbeing trampled by the boot of the tyrant.

5. summer'shoney breath = the balmy,perfumed breezes of summer, the scent of flowers.
hold out - an echo of hold a pleaabove.



6. wrackful- bringing devastation, wreckageand ruin. Full of such disasters. Based on the word wrack,meaningruin and devastation (OED.n.1.2.a.) An alternative spelling perhaps to wreckful(although OED does not give it as such).
the wrackful siege of battering days - theimage is of siege warfare,and the battering ram, which was a large beam of wood swung with greatviolenceagainst the gates of a city to batter them down . The end of asuccessfulsiege (from the attackers' point of view) was the capture anddestructionof the city.

7. rocksimpregnable - i.e. they areimpregnable to any human agency, but time can overpower them. impregnable- unassailable. A word often applied to fortresses andother strongmilitary defence points.

8. gatesof steel - the defence of awalled city. Shakespeare describes Troy's gates in Troilus and Cressida:
.........Priam's six-gated city,
Dardan, and Tymbria, Helias, Chetas, Troien,
And Antenorides, with massy staples
And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts,
Sperr up the sons of Troy. TC.Pr.15-17.
They protect the inhabitants for the interim but are no defence againstthe ravages of time.
but Time decays - but even them Time causes todecay. Decay is notnormally a transitive verb, and here it is left uncertain as to howTimeachieves its end of universal decay.

9.fearful - to be feared, causing fear.The fearful meditation is that which has already been stated, and thefearswhich are about to be stated.

10. Time'sbest jewel - the most preciousthing in the world; the beloved youth.
Time's chest = the treasure chest in whichTime stores all the thingsit steals. A coffin.

11. Thehand/foot imagery suggests the possibilityof a) tripping up Time as it speeds on its way; b) the helplessness ofahand raised in a useless and abandoned attempt to stop a far strongerandswifter adversary.

12. spoil= spoliation, despoilment,disfigurement. SB defends the Q reading of who his spoil orbeauty canforbid. He takes it to mean 'Who can deny Time the enjoymentof hisloot (spoil) and who can forbid the youth to be beautiful?'(SB.p.247.n.12).

13. Onone - this is the answer to thetwo questions posed in lines 11-12. No answer is given to the firstquestionof lines 9-10, where ... shall time's best jewel from time'schest liehid? But in a sense all three questions are answered, if weallow themiracle that the jewel may be hidden in the lines of this (and other)sonnets,that the poet will hold back the swift foot of time, and that thedespoliationof beauty will be made good by the descriptions of his beauty to befoundin these verses.

14. mylove = you, the beloved youth;my love for you. The blackness of the ink opposed to the shiningbrightnessof the youth described in the sonnets is part of the miracle of hispreservation.