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Essay / Analysis of Shakespeare and the Sonnets - 1995
Summer and death are personified, suggesting that death is an adversary to the poet's love. The verse of Sonnet 18 summarizes the theme, the ability of art to preserve romantic beauty throughout the ages, and gives a more optimistic idea, using words such as "lives" and "life", fighting death, into which he transforms his lover. an eternal summer, which never ends, preserving it forever. The speaker finds a way to carry on the young man's legacy and beauty through poetry, as promised in the verse stating, "as long as men can breathe or eyes can see." Sonnet 18 is a heartwarming and touching example of endless love that was simply written, easy to read and interpret. Sonnet 129 is a typical Shakespearean sonnet in iambic form, but it is structured as a single continuous sentence, except for the final couplet which makes it distinctive. This sonnet is not addressed to any specific person, but is intended as a sermon to the audience about the dangers of sexual lust. Sonnet 129 is rare because of its impersonal tone listing the types of experiences offered by lust. The element of time and the element of result are present in the sonnet, as Shakespeare depicts desire before action, during action and after action, in order to show the gap between expectation, fulfillment and results or between desire, experience and memory.