Sonnet 55
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lover's eyes.
How fleeting is that moment when we look into another's eyes and feel nothing but the tranquility of mutual passion. But how persistent that moment proves to be, haunting our imaginations for days and years. In the blissful transcendence of first love, which, as the poets remind us, is always the most pure and meaningful part, we begin to feel anything is possible, even perhaps eternity.
Shakespeare was evidently no exception. In this sonnet, he boasts that his words, animated by the beauty of his beloved, will last until the crack of doom; and it is with a kind of beatific arrogance that he sets forth the "contents" of his vision. (Stressed on the second syllable, these "contents" might also be happily misconstrued as the contentment of his heart…)
He begins by contrasting the "marble" or "gilded monuments" of royalty with his "powerful rhyme." The latter is a surprising phrase because "rhyme" is often a putdown that the sophisticated like to make of poetry that dares to be simple. But the monuments to an elite cannot survive an art that belongs to the people, and there is nothing as common as the language we speak.
As a memorial, the poem is far more resilient to time than an "unswept" or uncared for tomb. Time is personified as a "sluttish" woman; meaning she is either unkempt or debauched. Many critics favor the first interpretation, but I wonder if Shakespeare is evoking profane love to contrast with the sacred. The "besmeared" traces of erosion on a broken headstone are like the rouged kisses from a femme fatale who keeps us dangling until we die, forgotten and alone. In a wider sense, "sluttish time" is time that is prostituted—wasted on activities that come to nothing.
From this painted, destructive Venus, we turn to Mars the god of war, who burns whole cities. Here Shakespeare invites us to imagine an apocalyptic scene, where chaos overwhelms civilization. War topples statues, even Michelangelo's David—its Goliath form crashing to the floor. "Broils" or riots erupt—hysterical crowds rooting out the foundations of our grandest buildings, turning classical "masonry" to rubble. We may think of the Vandals sacking Rome or planes smashing into skyscrapers, but though such fires melt steel, they cannot touch the poem.
Why not? Because the sonnet's combination of rhyme, rhythm, and drama, set into motion by the inexorable force of love, enables words otherwise stiff and cloddish to dance in the mind. Shakespeare implies this by referring to his lover pacing forth to find "room" for the world's praise… He's asking us to hear the insistent tread of the poem's metrical feet throughout the stanza—a term which in fact means "room" in Italian. Every iambic beat is a victory against death as the poem's music moves from mind to mind, and from one generation to the next.
It is as a "living record," as words on our lips, that the poem survives to challenge "all-oblivious enmity," the hatred that would choose to bury the past in a perpetual Year Zero. As readers today, we are custodians of Shakespeare's promise. And to make it come true, we needn't so much interpret the poem as absorb it. Live with it. Then its words become our words, our thoughts and dreams. And when we come to experience love, something of the sonnet's shining light will help us to discern what is of deepest value. It is we who possess the "eyes of all posterity" that "wear this world out to the ending doom," meaning not to wear down but to outlast.
In the final couplet, Shakespeare's vision of eternal life becomes literal. Taking a Christian perspective, he hopes to be reunited with his beloved on the Day of Judgment. But until that day, the memory and reality of this love survives, in every steady look of shared astonished delight.
William Shakespeare (1564 –1616) was an English poet and playwright, regarded by many as the finest writer in the English language.
Christopher Nield is a poet living in London.
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