Jan 1, 2010
This fourteen-line poem, which is divided into three distinct quatrains (four-line stanzas) followed by a couplet (two lines), is addressed to the poet’s lover and comments on the approach of old age in the speaker. As in all the Shakespearian sonnets, the voice is that of the poet. The lover has sometimes been interpreted as the unknown “Mr. W. H.” to whom the first quarto edition was dedicated, but Samuel Taylor Coleridge surmised that the lover must be a woman.
The poet opens by stating that his lover must behold him at the time of life corresponding to...
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