Shakespeare structured this sonnet as an English or Shakespearean sonnet. A Shakespearean sonnet consists of three quatrains (sets of four lines that together make a point) followed by an ending couplet. The sonnet establishes a pleasing sense of rhythm through use of iambic pentameter and the regularity of quatrains in which the last word of alternate lines rhyme in an ABAB pattern. This structure underscores the theme.
Shakespeare uses an antithetical style to make his point that the young man in question should procreate (have children) while he can. In antithesis, opposites are juxtaposed or put together. This, along with the regular rhythm (da-DUM, da-DUM), creates a sense of balance that emphasizes the either/or argument the speaker is making.
In the first quatrain, Shakespeare juxtaposes the waning or aging of his friend against the growing of "fresh blood" which having a child would represent. As the friend grows...
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older, the child will bloom into a new youth that will mirror the friend's once younger self.
In the second quatrain, the antithesis is between the "wisdom, beauty and increase" of having a child and the "folly, age and cold decay" of refusing to procreate. The speaker here chides or lectures the young man, telling him that if the whole world adopted his attitude and refused to procreate, the human race would die out in sixty years.
In the third quatrain, the antithesis is between those not made for "store" (breeding) because they are unattractive—"Harsh, featureless and rude"—and people like the youth, who is "best endowed" or handsome.
In the final couplet, Shakespeare's speaker personifies nature as a woman, saying she formed the youth in question as a "seal" or imprint of her beauty and wants him to "print" more of himself rather than let the copies die away. Here, Shakespeare moves from antithesis to a metaphor, comparing the speaker to a beautiful object that can and should be reproduced.
Shakespeare's structure and style reinforces the point that either the young man must procreate and renew himself or he will simply age and die out.
The structure of William Shakespeare's Sonnet 11, "As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow'st" is comprised both of repeated patterns of sound and of rhetorical patterns giving shape to the ideas and argument of the sonnet.
As is typical of Shakespeare's sonnets, Sonnet 11 takes the form of a Shakespearean or English sonnet. It consists of 14 lines of iambic pentameter. Its rhyme scheme consists of three open quatrains followed by a couple, i.e. ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.
As is also structurally typical of the Shakespearean sonnet, the poem is divided into three rhetorical parts with clear logical breaks or "turns" (Italian: "volta") between them. The first part, consisting of the first eight lines (or first two quatrains), sets out the premise that although humans are mortal, we live on in our children, expressed in the lines:
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow'st,
Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest.
The focus shifts between the end of line 8 and the beginning of line 9, in the first of the two "turns" of the poem. The third quatrain (lines 9-12) emphasizes that while it doesn't matter if "harsh, featureless, and rude" people refrain from reproducing, it is the duty of those blessed with nature's bounty to pass it on to descendants.
Another minor turn occurs at the end of line 12, leading up to the conclusion that the addressee is so attractive that he should act as a "seal" stamping out copies by having many children.
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