Sonnet 65 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. Synopsis This sonnet is a continuation of Sonnet 64, and is an influential poem on the aspect of Time's destruction. Shakespeare also offers an escape from Time's clasp in his end couplet, suggesting that the love and human emotion he has used through his writing will test Time and that through the years the black ink will still shine bright. Shakespeare begins this sonnet by listing several seemingly vast and unbreakable things which are destroyed by time, then asking what chance beauty has of escaping the same fate. A main theme is that many things are powerful, but nothing remains in this universe forever, especially not a fleeting emotion such as love. Mortality rules over the universe and everything is perishable in this world, so it is only through the timeless art of writing that emotion and beauty can be preserved. Structure Sonnet 65 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form, abab cdcd efef gg and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The first line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter: × / × / × / × / × / Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, (65.1) / = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus. The tenth line exhibits a rightward movement of the third ictus (the resulting four-position figure, × × / /, is sometimes referred to as a minor ionic): × / × / × × / / × / Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid? (65.10) This figure may also be detected in lines eleven and fourteen, along with an initial reversal in line three. Analysis Relation to adjacent sonnets Time is not an innocuous entity. Here in Sonnet 65 Shakespeare shows time's cruel ravages on all that we believe is enduring. According to Lowry Nelson Jr., Sonnet 65 is simply a continuation of Sonnet 64 and he argues that "both poems are meditations on the theme of time's destructiveness". He also explains that "Sonnet 65 makes use of