What are most highly valued of all are those that transcend time, and that is the sun. Metaphysics The relationship between man and sun in sonnet 7 is metaphysical. The sun is the center of our being, but is also an object of desire. We want the sun's immortality. But man and the sun rely on one another to coexist. Man needs sun to survive on earth, and the sun would be of no significance without man. Man will cycle ad nauseam in this world yet the sun stays the same. The sun is reliable and unchanging. To the sun, one man is the same to another is the same to another. Notes References Baldwin, T. W. On the Literary Genetics of Shakspeare's Sonnets. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1950. Engle, Lars (October 1989). Afloat in Thick Deeps: Shakespeare's Sonnets on Certainty. PMLA 104. pp. 832–843. Freedman, Penelope (2007). Power and Passion in Shakespeare's Pronouns. Hampshire: Asgate. pp. 3, 5. 16–17. Hackett, Robin (1999). Supplanting Shakespeare’s Rising Sons: A Perverse Reading Through Woolf's The Waves: Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature. 18. pp. 263–280. Hubler, Edwin. The Sense of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952. Larsen, Kenneth J. Essays on Shakespeare's Sonnets. http://www.williamshakespeare-sonnets.com Schoenfeldt, Michael (2007). The Sonnets: The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's Poetry. Patrick Cheney, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. pp. 128, 132. Tyler, Thomas (1990). Shakespeare's Sonnets. London D. Nutt. External links Paraphrase of sonnet in modern language Analysis of the sonnet British poems Sonnets by William Shakespeare