Sonnet 106 claims that the old poets who praised beautiful knights and ladies were unknowingly prophesying the young man, and that the present age, which can actually see him, has the eyes to admire his beauty but not the words to praise it.
Sonnet 106: Full Poem
When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have expressed
Even such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And, for they looked but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
Text from the 1609 Quarto, with spelling and punctuation lightly modernized.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about Sonnet 106 for quick reference.
What Sonnet 106 Means
The speaker has been reading old books. In the “chronicle of wasted time,” the records of years long gone, he finds descriptions of beautiful people, and he notices that the poets who wrote them were reaching for something they had not seen.
In the first quatrain, the old writers praised “the fairest wights,” the loveliest people of their day, and their subject made their verse beautiful in turn: “beauty making beautiful old rhyme.” The people they praised were “ladies dead and lovely knights,” the figures of medieval romance.
The second quatrain narrows to the technique of that praise. The old poets wrote in the “blazon,” a catalogue of a beloved’s features taken one by one: hand, foot, lip, eye, and brow. Reading these lists, the speaker sees that the old writers were trying to express “Even such a beauty as you master now.” The young man possesses exactly the beauty they were describing.
At line 9, the speaker draws his conclusion. If the old poets were describing the young man’s kind of beauty before he existed, then their praises were “prophecies” of the present, all “prefiguring” him. And because they could only imagine him, looking “with divining eyes,” they lacked the skill to praise him properly.
The couplet turns the same judgment on the present. The speaker and his contemporaries can see the young man with their own eyes, which the old poets could not, yet they “lack tongues to praise.” The old writers had words without the sight; the living have the sight without the words.
Sonnet 106 Line by Line
Each line, with the sense of it in plain English.
Themes
Sonnet 106 is a poem about the relation between past and present writing, and its themes concern who is able to see beauty and who is able to describe it.
Old Poetry as Prophecy
The central idea of the poem is that the past was writing about the future without knowing it. The old poets thought they were praising their own ladies and knights, but the speaker reads their praise as a description of someone not yet born. The old heroes of romance become early, imperfect sketches of him. A similar wish appears in Sonnet 59, where the speaker longs to find the young man’s “image in some antique book.” Sonnet 106 suggests that the antique books did contain his image, as a forecast.
Seeing Versus Saying
The poem divides the work of praise into two parts: seeing the beauty and finding words for it. The old poets had the words but saw only “with divining eyes,” by guesswork. The present generation has “eyes to wonder” but lacks “tongues to praise.” Nobody in the poem has both. In the poem’s terms, the young man’s beauty exceeds language in any period, a large compliment delivered as a confession of failure.
The Limits of the Poet’s Skill
Many of the sonnets near this one worry about the speaker’s ability to write. Sonnet 103 laments the “poverty” of his Muse, and Sonnet 105 admits that his verse keeps repeating one argument, “Fair, kind, and true.” Sonnet 106 places that worry in a longer history. If the old poets lacked “skill enough” and the living poets “lack tongues,” then the speaker’s own inadequacy is not a personal fault but the common condition of anyone who tries to praise this subject.
Form and Language
Sonnet 106 builds its argument from the vocabulary of history, heraldry, and prophecy, and its form carries the reader from the library to the present moment.
Meter and Rhyme
The poem follows the usual Shakespearean pattern of three quatrains and a couplet in iambic pentameter. Line 6 is built of one-syllable words, “Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,” and the repeated preposition makes the meter tick through the list like a pen moving down a page. Line 8 opens with “Even,” which is usually read as one syllable to keep the line regular. The rhyme of “prefiguring” with “sing” falls on the light final syllable of “prefiguring,” so it is lighter than the other rhymes in the poem.
“Chronicle” and “Wasted Time”
A “chronicle” was a history written as a record of events year by year, and the word gives the first line the feel of an archive. “Wasted time” means time that has passed and been used up, rather than time thrown away, though the modern sense hovers nearby. The phrase sets the old poems in a vanished past.
The Blazon
The “blazon” was originally a heraldic term for the formal description of a coat of arms. Poets borrowed it for a catalogue of a beloved’s features, praised one part at a time, and line 6 performs a short blazon of its own. Shakespeare uses the word in the same sense elsewhere: in Twelfth Night, Olivia, thinking about the disguised Viola, says, “Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions, and spirit, / Do give thee five-fold blazon.” The convention was familiar enough to be mocked, as it is in Sonnet 130, which takes apart the standard comparisons one by one.
“Prophecies,” “Prefiguring,” and “Divining”
The sestet borrows the language of prophecy. To prefigure is to represent something in advance, and the word was used in religious interpretation for the way events in the Old Testament were read as foreshadowing the New. “Divining” suggests the soothsayer’s guess. These words give the young man a kind of fulfillment role: the old poems become the promise and he becomes the event they promised. Our guide to key literary devices in the sonnets covers more of these patterns.
A Closer Reading
Sonnet 106 turns literary history into a story about the young man, and its closing admission of failure is the poem’s boldest form of praise.
The first eight lines are one long sentence of reading. The speaker moves from the general (“the chronicle of wasted time”) to the specific (“Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow”), the way a reader’s attention narrows as a book draws him in. At the end of that sentence comes the discovery: the old pen “would have expressed / Even such a beauty as you master now.” The verb “master” matters: the old poets strained to express a beauty that the young man simply owns.
The sestet then performs a striking reversal. Ordinarily, a poet who compares his beloved to the heroes of romance is borrowing their prestige. Here, the borrowing runs backward. The old ladies and knights are emptied of their own value and become placeholders, all “prefiguring” the young man. The religious coloring of that word is especially pointed so soon after Sonnet 105, in which the speaker insists, “Let not my love be call’d idolatry.” Sonnet 106 does not call the young man divine, but it gives him the role of the one whom earlier texts foretold, which comes close to the thing Sonnet 105 denied.
The couplet is where the argument becomes most interesting. The speaker could have ended by claiming that he, at last, has the skill the old poets lacked. Instead, he includes himself in the failure: “we, which now behold these present days, / Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.” The modesty does real work. If every poet in every age falls short, then falling short becomes the proof of the subject’s worth. The speaker escapes the need to compete with the old poets, and with any living rivals, by declaring the contest impossible.
There is also a quiet paradox in the poem’s own existence. A sonnet that claims the present lacks “tongues to praise” is itself a polished act of praise. The poem knows this. Its final line does not say that the present lacks words altogether, only that it lacks words equal to what its eyes see. The gap between “wonder” and “praise” is the space the sonnet writes in, and the poem suggests that the best a poet can do is describe that gap honestly.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Sonnet 106, answered briefly.
Who Is Sonnet 106 Addressed To?
The young man of the Fair Youth sonnets. Sonnets 1 to 126 are generally read as addressed to him, and this poem praises his beauty as the thing earlier poets were trying to describe.
What Is the “Chronicle of Wasted Time”?
It is the record of past ages: the histories and old poems the speaker has been reading. “Wasted” here means spent or gone by, so the phrase describes time that has passed into history.
What Is a Blazon in Sonnet 106?
A blazon is a catalogue of a beloved’s beauty, listed feature by feature. Line 6, “Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,” gives a short example of the kind of list the old poets wrote.
Why Does the Speaker Say the Old Poems Were Prophecies?
Because the beauty they described matches the young man’s, the speaker decides they were describing him in advance. Since they could only imagine him, “with divining eyes,” their praise fell short.
Where Is the Volta in Sonnet 106?
At line 9, with “So all their praises are but prophecies.” The speaker stops describing what he has read and draws a conclusion from it. The couplet applies the same failure to the present.
Related Sonnets
Three nearby and related sonnets share this poem’s interest in old books, praise, and the limits of the poet’s words.