Sonnet 16 claims that a child is a better weapon against Time than any poem, and that the speaker’s own verse is too weak to keep the young man alive, though the poem that says so has outlasted every child it could have been compared to.
Sonnet 16: Full Poem
But wherefore do not you a mightier way
Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time?
And fortify yourself in your decay
With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?
Now stand you on the top of happy hours,
And many maiden gardens, yet unset,
With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers,
Much liker than your painted counterfeit:
So should the lines of life that life repair,
Which this (Time’s pencil or my pupil pen),
Neither in inward worth nor outward fair,
Can make you live yourself in eyes of men.
To give away yourself keeps yourself still,
And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill.
Text from the 1609 Quarto, with spelling and punctuation lightly modernized. Line 10 keeps the Quarto’s parentheses; lines 9 to 12 are among the hardest in the sonnets to punctuate, and editions differ.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about Sonnet 16 for quick reference.
What Sonnet 16 Means
Sonnet 16 picks up exactly where Sonnet 15 left off, and then takes back part of what it promised.
Sonnet 15 ended with the speaker at war with Time, promising to renew the young man in verse. Sonnet 16 begins with “But”: why don’t you fight this bloodthirsty tyrant, Time, in a more powerful way? Why don’t you defend yourself against your own decline with something more blessed than my barren poetry?
The second quatrain shows the moment of opportunity. You stand at the peak of your life, at the height of your happy hours. Many young women, like gardens not yet planted, would gladly bear your children, living flowers that would look far more like you than any painted portrait.
The third quatrain explains why. Children are “the lines of life” that renew life itself. Neither a painter’s brush nor the speaker’s inexperienced pen can capture the young man’s inner worth or his outward beauty well enough to keep him alive in people’s eyes.
The couplet resolves the paradox. By giving himself away, in marriage and in children, the young man keeps himself forever. He must live on as a portrait drawn by his own sweet skill.
Sonnet 16 Line by Line
Each line, with the sense of it in plain English.
Themes
Sonnet 16 stands at the turning point of the Procreation Sonnets, where two ways of beating Time compete.
War on Time
Time is a “bloody tyrant,” and the young man is urged to “make war” and “fortify” himself. The military language continues from the end of Sonnet 15, where the speaker declared himself “in war with Time.” Earlier sonnets pictured Time as a reaper with a scythe, as in Sonnet 12. Here it is an enemy army, and a child is the fortress.
The Limits of Art
The speaker calls his own verse “barren rhyme” and his pen a “pupil pen,” the pen of a beginner. Neither painting nor poetry, he says, can capture the young man’s inner worth and outer beauty. It is a surprising admission right after Sonnet 15 claimed the power to “engraft” him new, and it stands in sharp contrast to the confident promises of Sonnet 18 and Sonnet 19.
A Child as a Living Portrait
The poem sets a child against a painted “counterfeit.” A portrait is a copy made by someone else; a child is a likeness made by the young man himself, “drawn by your own sweet skill.” The argument turns fatherhood into the highest form of art, one that produces not an image of life but life.
Form and Language
Sonnet 16 borrows the vocabulary of war, gardening, and portrait painting, and ties them together with a pun on “lines.”
Meter and Rhyme
The poem is a Shakespearean sonnet in iambic pentameter, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. To keep the meter, “blessed” in line 4 is pronounced with two syllables, “bless-ed.” The couplet’s rhyme, “still” and “skill,” links staying the same with making something, the paradox the poem ends on.
“The Lines of Life”
Line 9’s phrase carries several meanings at once: lines of descent, a family line; the lines a painter draws; the lines of a poem; and perhaps the lines on a face. Of all of these, the poem says, only the family line can truly “life repair,” renewing life rather than imitating it.
Painting Words
“Painted counterfeit,” “pencil,” and “drawn” all come from portraiture. In Shakespeare’s English, a “pencil” was a fine brush, and a “counterfeit” was simply a likeness, not necessarily a fake. The words build toward the couplet, where the young man becomes both the artist and the subject of the only portrait that lives.
Maiden Gardens
“Maiden gardens, yet unset” pictures young, unmarried women as gardens not yet planted, and children as “living flowers.” The image echoes the farming language of earlier Procreation Sonnets, such as the “uneared womb” of Sonnet 3, but it is gentler, closer to a flower bed than a plowed field.
A Closer Reading
Sonnet 16 is a poem arguing that poems are too weak to preserve anyone, and it is one of the reasons we still know the young man existed at all.
Its first word, “But,” tells us it is answering Sonnet 15. That poem ended with a bold claim: the speaker, at war with Time, would “engraft” the young man new in verse. Sonnet 16 immediately backs away. The poet’s rhyme is “barren,” his pen a “pupil,” and neither can make the young man “live yourself in eyes of men.” Only a child can do that.
The modesty is partly strategic. Praising the young man’s beauty as too great for any pen is a compliment, and it keeps the pressure on him to marry. But it also reads like a speaker testing a power he has just discovered and is not yet sure of. Sonnet 15 tried the claim; Sonnet 16 retreats from it; Sonnet 17 splits the difference, saying the young man should live twice, in a child and in rhyme; and Sonnet 18 drops the child altogether and trusts the poem alone.
History has settled the argument in a way the speaker could not predict. No one knows who the young man was, and no child of his is remembered. The “barren rhyme,” meanwhile, has been reprinted for over four centuries. The poem that calls itself too weak to keep him alive is, in the end, the only thing that has. Its own couplet describes this better than it knows: to give yourself away is to keep yourself still. The speaker gave his verse away, and it kept them both.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Sonnet 16, answered briefly.
Who Is Sonnet 16 Addressed To?
The young man of the Fair Youth sonnets, the same unnamed figure the Procreation Sonnets urge to marry and have children.
What Does “My Barren Rhyme” Mean?
The speaker’s own poetry, described as fruitless because, unlike a child, it cannot create new life. He calls it barren to contrast it with the young man’s ability to have children.
What Does “Painted Counterfeit” Mean?
A painted portrait. “Counterfeit” meant a likeness or copy. The poem argues that children would resemble the young man “much liker” than any painting could.
What Are “The Lines of Life”?
Mainly, the young man’s descendants, his family line, which can renew his life. The phrase also plays on the lines of a drawing and the lines of a poem, neither of which, the speaker says, can do the same.
How Is Sonnet 16 Connected to Sonnet 15?
It continues it directly, beginning with “But.” Sonnet 15 promised to renew the young man in verse; Sonnet 16 says a child would be a mightier way to fight Time than the speaker’s poetry.
Related Sonnets
Three sonnets frame Sonnet 16’s contest between children and verse.