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Sonnet 2 by William Shakespeare

Analysis

"Sonnet 2" is a poem written by William Shakespeare. This poem is about growing old and not having someone to live on in your memory. Shakespeare is preaching for everyone to have a son or daughter to live on in their name. He basically says that when you are old, it doesn't matter how beautiful you were or what you did when you were younger, no one will know. However, if you have a child, there is someone to live on in your name and tell your stories.

"Sonnet 2" is a poem written in iambic-pentameter and with the rhyme scheme ABABCDCDEFEFGG. This particular form of sonnet is known as the Shakespearean Sonnet.

Poem

Sonnet 2
By 

When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.
Next: Sonnet 3

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Nationality
English

Literary Movement
Renaissance, 16th Century

Subjects
Sonnet, Growing Old, Memory, Children, Life