15 When I consider everything that grows

Question 1

Summarise this poem:

1 quatrain

2 quatrain

3 quatrain

Conclusion

Answer 1

1. Human lack of control over time and fate
2. Men = ephemeral, non-agency
3. Focus on individual, Time dares to decay the fair youth’s beauty
4. Immortalisation in verse, war with time

Question 2

Analyse the first quatrain of sonnet 15

Answer 2

• ‘Holds in perfection but a little moment’
  
  • Breaks metre - mimetic of loss of perfection. If try to hold on, irony because will lose perfection (eg metre of line)
• ‘That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows’
  
  • Acting out a script, pre-determined, artificial quality
• ‘Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;’
  
  • Fate, non-agency

Question 3

Analyse the second quatrain of sonnet 15

Answer 3

• ‘Men as plants’
  
  • Transcience, helpless to ‘sky’s whims, lack of agency
• ‘Check’d’
  • Brutal, hard consonant, check mate - harshness of life
• ‘At height decrease’
  
  • Immediatly from prime get down
• ‘And wear their brave state out of memory;’
  
  • Loss of legacy - despite ‘bravery’ they are nonetheless powerless to time, forgotten
  • ‘wear’ - appearance, show
• Legacy = positioned as only way to combat time

Question 4

Analyse third quatrain of sonnet 15

Answer 4

• ‘Then the conceit of this inconstant stay’
  
  • Pride homonym
  • Oxymoron of ‘inconstant stay’ - emphasises transcience
  • ‘conceit’ draws attention to act of writing
• ‘Sets you most rich in youth before my sight’
  
  • Draws focus from general to the subject
• Battle field, ‘day of youth’ to ‘sullied night’
  
  • Beauty, youth
  • Petrarchan

Question 5

Analyse concluding couplet of sonnet 15

Answer 5

• ‘war’
  
  • Battle with abstract concept through abstract aka poetry
• ‘Ingraft’
  
  • Craftmanship godlike power of creation
  • Sonnet creating life
• Mirrored stress of final line, with caesura splitting down the middle
  
  • Creates a mirror image, immortalising
  • Undoes Time’s decay in a never-ending cycle
  • Creates a time-capsule for the fair youth’s beauty.