Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Sonnet Analysis # 1- Sonnet V

Sonnet V

Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,

Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter, and confounds him there;
Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness every where:
Then were not summer's distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was:
   But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet,
   Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet

Unclear words-
Tyrants:a cruel and oppressive ruler.
Doth: archaic third person singular present of do.
Confound:  cause surprise or confusion in (someone), esp. by acting against their expectations
O'er:archaic or poetic/literary contraction for over.
Distillation: the action of purifying a liquid by a process of heating and cooling.
Bereft:archaic past participle of bereave.
Bereave: be deprived of a loved one through a profound absence, esp. due to the loved one's death
Pent: closely confined or held back.
Leese: To lose

My interpretation:
The time that structures
the eye that stays
will it be like the tyrant?
Which it unfairly continues.
Time never rests during summer,
to the bad winters, confuses  him there.

Questions/unknown: Confusing on the weather, flowers and seasons tie into growing old.
Progressing seasons means time is moving forwards.

Growing older, your substance meaning personality still remains concentrated, even though the outer part of your being continues to wear thing.

How it relates to my big question: It relates to my big questions since it ties into growing older and losing the exterior looks but remaining the same interior.

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