Sonnet 12 Reflection

This sonnet once again seems to be about how the young man needs to reproduce to create a bloodline and carry on his amazing beauty through time. His beginning once again seems to be one of the more powerful visuals that stand out in my mind. He almost gives the young man a time limit on how long he has before his beauty will fade. It provides a sense of urgency to having children and grabs the reader/listener’s attention to make them more susceptible to the message of the entire thing. It seemed strange, though, that Shakespeare chooses to use summer as a visual. It is seen often throughout the sonnets that Shakespeare uses seasons to add to the effect of aging. Yet here he uses summer, a season of activity and beauty, when talking about how the young man is going to grow old and die. I would have liked to see the use of a colder season. It was a nice way to end the sonnet, though, by providing an opportunity to escape death through a bloodline.