the same words [brass, rage, hand, love] and more or less specific notions, but it proceeds and culminates far more impressively," in comparison to Sonnet 64. The last two couplets are Shakespeare's own summary on the theme that love itself is a "miracle" that time nor human intervention can destroy. Shakespeare critic Brents Stirling expands on Lowry's idea by placing sonnet 65 in a distinct group among the sonnets presumably addressed to Shakespeare's young friend, because of the strictly third-person mode of address. Stirling links sonnets 63-68 through their use of "uniform epithet, 'my love' or its variants such as 'my beloved' ". In sonnet 65, the pronoun 'his' directly references the epithet. "Sonnet 65 opens with an epitome of [sonnet] 64: 'Since brass not stone nor earth nor boundless sea..." The opening line refers back to the 'brass,' 'lofty towers,' 'firm soil,' and 'wa'try main' of 64. 'This rage' of 'sad mortality' calls to mind the 'mortal rage' of 64. "After its development of 64, sonnet 65 returns with its couplet to the couplet of 63: 'That in black ink my love may still shine bright' echoes 'His beauty' that 'shall in these black lines be seen'; and 'still shine' recalls 'still green' ". This "triad" of poems relates to the group of sonnets 66–68, for "Their respective themes, Time's ruin (63-65) and the Former Age, a pristine earlier world now in ruin and decay (66-68), were conventionally associated in Shakespeare's day," suggesting that the sonnets were written as a related group meant to be distinctly categorized. Verbal patterns Shakespearean scholar Helen Vendler characterizes Sonnet 65 as a "defective key word" sonnet. Often, Shakespeare will use a particular word prominently in each quatrain, prompting the reader to look for it in the couplet and note any change in usage. Here, however, he repeats the words "hold" and "strong" (modified slightly to "stronger" in Q1), but omits them in the couplet, thus rendering them "defective." Vendler claims that these key words are replaced by "miracle" and "black ink" respectively in the quatrain, citing as evidence the shift of focus from organic to inorganic, which parallels the same shift occurring more broadly from the octave to the sestet, as well as the presence of the letters i, a, c, and l visually yoking miracle to black ink. Stephen Booth supports this line of criticism, noting the juxtaposition of "hand" and "foot"