Sonnets

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1. 
   jamie-wheeler Teacher
   College - Sophomore

   In this line, "Death" is being used primarily as personification.  Personification is the granting of human thoughts and feelings to non-human things or ideas.

   Here, death is given the ability to "brag" and to "wander" and to provide shade.   Obviously, the actual state of death can do none of these things.  Death, at its most factual definiton, is the absence of life. 

   The speaker gives death these qualities in order to demonstrate that even death, the absence of life, cannot kill his love.  Personification is employed by poets and other writers to help us express deep emotions that refuse to be calmed by mere fact. 

    

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   http:/www.enotes.com/sonnet-18

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   Posted by jamie-wheeler on Friday February 15, 2008 at 1:56 PM