Sonnet 64 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 The opening quatrain begins with the personification of time, a destroyer of great things built by man, a force man cannot equal. The second quatrain portrays a victorless struggle between the sea and the land. In the last quatrain the speaker applies these lessons to his own situation, realizing that death is inevitable and time will come and take his love away. The concluding couplet, in contrast to Shakespeare's typical practice, provides no solution, no clever twist; only inevitable tears. Structure Sonnet 64 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 fourth line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter: × / × / × / × / × / And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; (64.4) / = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus. The seventh line has both the first ictus moved to the right (resulting in a four-position figure, × × / /, sometimes referred to as a minor ionic), and a mid-line reversal. This creates a somewhat unusual case in which three stressed syllables in a row function as three ictuses, rather than one of them being demoted (as typically happens) to a nonictus. × × / / / × × / × / And the firm soil win of the watery main, (64.7) The meter demands a few variant pronunciations: The third line's "towers" functions as one syllable, and the seventh line's "watery" as two. Analysis and criticism The critic T. W. Baldwin explains that Sonnet 64 deals with Shakespeare's struggle against time, which he "cannot withstand". He also presents the idea of the revolution of sea and land, although not many other critics agree. Sonnet 64 catalogues instances of inevitable destruction so as to provide a consolation for death and places "emphasis on the inescapable fact of mutability". Because of the inevitability and finality of death, Shakespeare's lover is not choosing to leave him. On the contrary, his lover could not