What are the metaphors in Sonnet 65?

Shakespeare uses the military metaphor of a besieged city to emphasize the fragility of all that is worldly. No matter how strong the gates of such a city, even if they are made of steel, they are still subject to the decay of time. Yet Shakespeare knows of something stronger, much stronger than even the most impregnable fortress: the love immortalized in his works.

In using such a striking metaphor Shakespeare emphasizes the powerful nature of his love. This is something that will live on forever in his many poems, always able to withstand the "siege" of time. Shakespeare presents here a picture of his art which displays a considerable degree of confidence and self-assurance. He's absolutely certain that his work will attain immortality, thus achieving a great victory over the unrelenting forces of time.

What are the metaphors in Sonnet 65?

William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 65," like many of Shakespeare's sonnets, deals with the effects of the passage of time on the person to whom the sonnet is addressed. The speaker laments that their beauty will inevitably fade but takes comfort in the fact that it can be preserved in poetry. To get this message across, Shakespeare employs several metaphors. Beauty is repeatedly compared to fragile, delicate things and contrasted with stronger, more solid objects. The argument being: if even these sturdier things cannot survive, how can beauty?

In the first quatrain:

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,

But sad mortality o'ersways their power,

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,

Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

O fearful meditation! Where, alack,

Shall time’s best jewel from time’s chest lie hid? Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back? Or who his spoil or beauty can forbid?

Can you explain Sonnet 65 by William Shakespeare?

In brief, Sonnet 65 is about immortalizing beauty in ink that will be read by all from age to age to come. The contrast to this is the metaphor of the poem that compares the qualities of brass and stone to the qualities of beauty: "Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea"--which are such strong things--can withstand the "rage" of "mortality," neither, then, can "beauty," which has the strength of a flower. Therefore the poet intervenes in the raging destruction of Time's awesome power and immortalizes beauty in the ink of fourteen lines of a sonnet.

How might one interpret Shakespeare's Sonnet 65?

Sonnet 65 continues Sonnet 64's theme of the ravages of time, which is perhaps the most moving of the two sonnets.  The principal theme is, however, the transience of all things powerful and beautiful, threatened by Time:

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,/But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,/How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,/Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

Shakespeare compares the ability of beauty,"no stronger than a flower," to survive that onslaught of time that destroys such powerful elements as metal, stone, earth, the sea itself.  Shakespeare interestingly uses a legal construct--"hold a plea"--to describe the struggle between beauty and the powerful work of time.

In the second quatrain, Shakespeare shifts the comparison for this unavoidable battle in human affairs from beauty to the seasons, in this case, summer:

How will the honeyed breath of summer withstand/The Battering storm of time, When mortality even destroys/Great rocks and gates made of iron?

Here, the metaphor of life, summer, is even more delicate than the earlier beauty--"the honeyed breath of summer"--as ephemeral as it sounds as absolutely no chance of surviving the grinding effects of "Great rocks and gates made of iron," as well as the "battering storm of time."  The image of "breath" against such adamantine powers as rocks and iron reinforces its delicate, vulnerable nature .

Given the dramatic difference between the relative strengths of the two elements at odds with each other--beauty against time and nature--the poet express his very real concern about which can survive:

O fearful meditation! were, alack,/Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?/Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?/Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?

The poet naturally wonders--given the difference between beauty's strength and the over-powering power of earth's elements--what can possible save his lover's beauty--does he have to hide beauty from time?  Shakespeare explicit refers to the Greek God Mercury when he refers to holding "his swift foot back."

The couplet, providing the solution to this seemingly insurmountable problem:  the poet's own verse, extolling his lover's beauty in the permanence of black ink, will effectively stop the ravages of time in its tracks.  Time, unlike its power over life and beauty, has no power over the written word, and ink will preserve his love's beauty long after time has done its work.

What is the speaker asking in Sonnet 65's second quatrain and what do the metaphors mean?

In the first two lines of the second quatrain, the speaker asks,

How shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wrackful siege of batt'ring days?

The "summer's breath" here is a metaphor for youth and beauty or, more specifically, for the beauty of youth. The word "honey" implies that this beauty is sweet and good, but the fact that it is but a "breath" implies that it is also ephemeral and insubstantial. In the second part of the metaphor, time is described as "batt'ring days." The word "batt'ring" suggests that time pushes forward relentlessly and aggressively, as if trying to conquer life itself. The phrase "wrackful siege" further implies that time is like a powerful army, attacking life and the aforementioned beauty of youth.

In the second half of the second quatrain, the speaker says that not even "rocks" which seem "impregnable" can withstand the relentless attack of time. They will eventually erode and turn to dust. The speaker further says that not even "gates of steel so strong" can withstand time but rather will rust and "decay" over time. The images in this second part of the second quatrain imply an answer to the question posed in the first part of the same quatrain. If the question is how the beauty of youth can possibly withstand the passage of time, the answer is, quite simply, that it cannot.

Despite this rather melancholy message, the speaker does offer a glimmer of hope at the end of the sonnet. The speaker declares, in the final line, that the beauty of youth can endure and "shine bright" in the "black ink" of his poems. In other words, although the beauty of youth may fade over time, it will forever live on in the poet's descriptions.