Sonnet 63 argues that the young man will one day be as old and worn as the speaker is now, and that the speaker is already building a defense against that day: verse in which the young man’s beauty will stay green after his life is gone.
Sonnet 63: Full Poem
Against my love shall be as I am now,
With Time’s injurious hand crush’d and o’erworn;
When hours have drain’d his blood and fill’d his brow
With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn
Hath travell’d on to age’s steepy night;
And all those beauties whereof now he’s king
Are vanishing, or vanish’d out of sight,
Stealing away the treasure of his spring;
For such a time do I now fortify
Against confounding age’s cruel knife,
That he shall never cut from memory
My sweet love’s beauty, though my lover’s life:
His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
And they shall live, and he in them still green.
Text from the 1609 Quarto, with spelling and punctuation lightly modernized.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about Sonnet 63 for quick reference.
What Sonnet 63 Means
The first twelve lines form one long sentence whose main verb arrives late. The first eight lines describe a future time, and only at line 9 does the speaker say what he is doing about it. The opening word, “Against,” means “in preparation for” or “in defense against” the time when something will happen.
That time is when the young man, “my love,” will be as the speaker is now: crushed and worn down by “Time’s injurious hand.” The hours will have drained his blood and filled his forehead with lines and wrinkles. His youthful morning will have traveled on to the steep night of old age, and the beauties he now rules like a king will be disappearing or already gone, taking with them “the treasure of his spring.”
At line 9, the speaker announces his response. He is fortifying himself now, ahead of that time, against the “cruel knife” of age, which confounds and destroys. His goal is narrow and precise. Age may cut off the young man’s life, but it will not cut his beauty from memory.
The couplet names the means. The young man’s beauty will be seen “in these black lines,” the lines of the poem, and the lines will live, and he will stay “still green” in them, always fresh. The wrinkled “lines” that time draws on his face in line 4 are answered by the poet’s black lines on the page.
Sonnet 63 Line by Line
Each line, with the sense of it in plain English.
Themes
Sonnet 63 joins two of the sequence’s central concerns, time’s damage and poetry’s power to resist it, and adds a third: the speaker’s own age as a preview of the young man’s.
Time as an Attacker
Time in this poem is violent. It has an “injurious hand” that crushes, hours that drain blood, and a “cruel knife” that cuts. The imagery belongs to a group of poems in this stretch of the sequence. Sonnet 60 has time that “delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,” Sonnet 64 speaks of “Time’s fell hand,” and Sonnet 65 imagines the “wrackful siege of battering days.” Where those poems widen the assault to towers, rocks, and gates, Sonnet 63 keeps its focus on a single face.
Poetry as Defense
The speaker’s answer to time is to “fortify,” a military word that turns the poem into a stronghold. The claim that verse can preserve beauty is one of the sequence’s recurring promises. Sonnet 19 ends, “My love shall in my verse ever live young,” and Sonnet 65 hopes “That in black ink my love may still shine bright.” Sonnet 63 is careful about what the defense can do. It does not protect the young man’s life, only his beauty’s place in memory.
The Older Speaker as a Mirror
The opening line makes the speaker himself the evidence. “As I am now” asks the reader to look at the speaker’s worn face and see the young man’s future in it. The previous poem, Sonnet 62, had just described that face as “Beated and chopp’d with tanned antiquity.” Sonnet 63 uses the speaker’s age not for self-pity but as a forecast, and the gap in years between the two men becomes a reason to act.
Form and Language
Sonnet 63 is built around a long sentence that holds its main clause back for eight lines, so the reader waits through the forecast of decay before the speaker’s resolve arrives.
Meter and Rhyme
The poem follows the regular Shakespearean rhyme scheme in iambic pentameter. Most rhymes are full, including “now” and “brow,” “night” and “sight,” and “seen” and “green.” The exception is “fortify” with “memory,” which pairs a stressed final syllable with the light last syllable of “memory.” Elisions such as “o’erworn” and “travell’d” help keep the lines to ten syllables.
The Delayed Main Clause
“Against” in line 1 governs everything up to line 8, and the series of “when” clauses keeps adding to the picture of ruin: drained blood, lined brow, the journey from morning to night, vanishing beauties. The reader feels the weight of time pile up before line 9 supplies the subject and verb, “do I now fortify.” The syntax enacts the argument, holding the damage in suspense until the defense is ready.
“Lines”
The word “lines” appears twice, and the repetition carries the poem’s argument. In line 4, the hours fill the young man’s brow “With lines and wrinkles.” In line 13, his beauty will be seen “in these black lines.” Time writes lines on his face, and the poet writes lines on the page. The poem sets one kind of writing against the other and trusts the second to outlast the first.
Morning, Night, and Spring
The poem compresses a human life into two familiar cycles. Youth is “morn,” age is “night,” and the young man’s beauty is “the treasure of his spring.” The adjective “steepy” makes the slope from day to night a sharp descent. The couplet’s “still green” completes the seasonal metaphor: in verse, the young man stays in the springtime that age takes from him in life.
A Closer Reading
Sonnet 63 is a poem about preparing in advance, and its confidence depends on accepting, plainly and early, that the young man will lose what the poem preserves.
One striking feature of Sonnet 63 is its matter-of-factness about death. Line 12 states the bargain without softening it: age will not cut the young man’s beauty from memory, “though my lover’s life.” The phrase is clipped, as if the speaker does not want to dwell on it, but he does not deny it. The poem’s defense is limited to memory and the page, and that limit makes its promise more believable.
The opening line shapes the whole poem. By measuring the young man against “as I am now,” the speaker turns his own body into a calendar. The young man can look at the older man and see what is coming. This is a strange kind of love poem, because it asks the beloved to imagine himself wrinkled, drained, and diminished. Yet the speaker’s purpose is protective. He describes the damage so that he can say he has already begun to guard against it.
The word “fortify” gives the poem its stance. A fortification is best built before the siege, not during it, and the speaker insists on “now”: “do I now fortify.” Writing the poem is the act of building. The speaker is not promising future praise but pointing to the lines in front of the reader as the wall already standing. This is why the couplet can speak in the future tense with such assurance: “His beauty shall in these black lines be seen.”
The final phrase, “he in them still green,” contains a quiet tension. “Still” here means always, and “green” means fresh and young, so the line promises permanent youth. But “green” also describes things that are growing, and the young man in the poem is fixed, unable to age because he is no longer a living body but an image in ink. The poem wins its contest with time by accepting that what survives is the beauty, not the man.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Sonnet 63, answered briefly.
Who Is Sonnet 63 Addressed To?
It does not address anyone directly. It speaks about the young man of the Fair Youth sonnets in the third person and calls him “my love.” Sonnets 67 and 68 also speak of him as “he.”
What Does “Against My Love Shall Be as I Am Now” Mean?
It means “in preparation for the time when my love will be as old as I am now.” “Against” here means in anticipation of, or as a defense against, a future event.
Where Is the Volta in Sonnet 63?
At line 9, with “For such a time do I now fortify.” The first eight lines describe future decay, and the sestet gives the speaker’s response to it.
What Are the “Black Lines” in Sonnet 63?
They are the lines of the poem, written in black ink. They answer the “lines and wrinkles” that time draws on the young man’s face in line 4.
Does Sonnet 63 Say the Young Man Will Live Forever?
No. Line 12 accepts that age will cut off “my lover’s life.” What the poem promises to preserve is his beauty in memory and in verse.
Related Sonnets
Three sonnets share this poem’s war against time and its faith in verse.