Sonnet 68 Lyrics
When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,
Before these bastard signs of fair were born,
Or durst inhabit on a living brow;
Before the golden tresses of the dead,
The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,
To live a second life on second head;
Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay:
In him those holy antique hours are seen,
Without all ornament, itself and true,
Making no summer of another's green,
Robbing no old to dress his beauty new;
And him as for a map doth Nature store,
To show false Art what beauty was of yore.
About
Sonnet 68 in the 1609 Quarto.
This sonnet continues the sequence in praise of the Fair Youth. It develops the idea, explored in sonnets 66 and 67, that nothing and no-one can match the beauty of the beloved boy. The Bard complains that there is too much artificial beauty in the world, and natural loveliness occurs less than it used to. The Fair Youth is the only genuinely beautiful person remaining.
A similar dislike of artificial beauty is expressed by Shakespeare, in Sonnet 127.
About Sonnets
A sonnet is a poem which expresses a thought or idea and develops it, often cleverly and wittily.
The sonnet genre is often, although not always, about ideals or hypothetical situations. It reaches back to the Medieval Romances, where a woman is loved and idealised by a worshipping admirer. For example, Sir Philip Sydney in the Astrophil and Stella sonnet sequence wrote in this mode. Poems were circulated within groups of educated intellectuals and they did not necessarily reflect the poet’s true emotions, but were a form of intellectual showing-off. This may not have been true of all; it is a matter of academic debate today. It is generally believed, however, that Shakespeare’s sonnets were autobiographical, though some dispute this.
BBC Podcast, Melvyn Bragg, “In Our Time” Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Sonnets are made up of fourteen lines, each being ten syllables long. Its rhymes are arranged according to one of the following schemes:
• Italian, where eight lines consisting of two quatrains make up the first section of the sonnet, called an octave. This section will explore a problem or an idea. It is followed by the next section of six lines called a sestet, that forms the ‘answer’ or a counter-view. This style of sonnet is also sometimes called a Petrarchan sonnet.
• English, which comprises three quatrains, making twelve lines in total, followed by a rhyming couplet. They too explore an idea. The ‘answer’ or resolution comes in the final couplet. Shakespeare’s sonnets follow this pattern. Edmund Spenser’s sonnets are a variant.
At the break in the sonnet — in Italian after the first eight lines, in English after twelve lines — there is a ‘turn’ or volta, after which there will be a change or new perspective on the preceding idea.
Language
The metre is iambic pentameter, that is five pairs of stressed and unstressed syllables to the line. The effect is elegant and rhythmic, and conveys an impression of dignity and seriousness. Shakespeare’s sonnets follow this pattern.
Rhyme Scheme
The rhyming pattern comprises three sets of four lines, forming quatrains, followed by a closed rhyming couplet.
In sonnet 68 it forms ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG. This is typical of Shakespeare’s compositions. For contemporary readers today not all the rhymes are perfect because of changed pronunciation, but in Shakespeare’s time they would probably have rhymed perfectly.
See Don Paterson – Reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Faber & Faber, 2012
Helen Vendler The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets Harvard University Press
Shakespeare’s Sonnets with Three Hundred Years of Commentary, Associated University Press 2007
BBC Podcast, Melvyn Bragg, “In Our Time” Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
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