When I Do Count the Clock That Tells the Time is the first line of Sonnet 12 by the great English dramatist and poet William Shakespeare. Shakespeare is perhaps the world’s greatest playwright. He also ranks as one of the leading poets in the English language. See Shakespeare, William.
Shakespeare’s sonnets were printed in 1609, when the poet was already a well-established playwright. The dates of the poems are unknown. Shakespeare probably wrote the sonnets over a period of years. There are 154 sonnets in the sequence, though some scholars believe that a different author may have written Sonnets 153 and 154, those focused on Cupid, the Roman god of love. Only two of the sonnets appeared before 1609, in a book of poetry called The Passionate Pilgrim (1599).
Like almost all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, Sonnet 12 consists of three quatrains (four-line units) followed by a concluding couplet (two-line unit). Each quatrain has a rhyme scheme of abab, cdcd, efef, with the final couplet a rhyming one (gg).
When I do count the clock that tells the time, And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; When I behold the violet past prime, And sable curls all silvered o’er with white; When lofty trees I see barren of leaves, Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard; Then of thy beauty do I question make, That thou among the wastes of time must go, Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake, And die as fast as they see others grow; And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.
Sonnet 12 deals with one of the central themes of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the theme of time. Like almost all of the sonnets in the first sequence of 17 sonnets, Sonnet 12 argues for the necessity of marriage and children. This sonnet, like the first 126, is addressed to an unidentified young nobleman. His beauty has inspired the poet’s reflections on beauty, life’s seasons, and the ravages of time.
The sonnet opens with references to passing time by the hour. The awareness of time “ticking” can be heard in the deliberate rhythms of the first line. All of the sonnets are written in a traditional iambic meter consisting of alternating unstressed and stressed syllables. An iambic meter is close to natural speech, and it can be so subtle that the reader scarcely notices it. But the meter can also be emphasized, as in this sonnet, by short words and strong consonants.
The counting of minutes and hours then moves to the image of day passing. The “brave” (meaning beautiful as well as courageous) day is taken over by “hideous night.” After briefly considering images of age in wilting violets and graying hair, the poet moves on to the seasons. Trees barren of leaves and the harvest borne on a bier (a barrow, also suggestive of a funeral carriage) demonstrate the change of seasons. Poets often use seasonal cycles to describe hope and renewal, but in this sonnet, images from nature indicate decay. Shakespeare uses 12 of the sonnet’s 14 lines to build up a picture of the “wastes of time.”
As in many other of the sonnets of this sequence, having children is shown as the greatest defense against time. Once again, Shakespeare has presented us with a paradox (a seemingly contradictory statement that contains an essential truth). Humanity and time here conquer each other. Time will eventually “take thee hence.” But equally, time will not succeed if people have bred, because children will continue life beyond the single existence of an individual.
For more information about Shakespeare’s sonnets, see Shakespeare, William (Shakespeare’s poems). See also English literature (Elizabethan poetry); Poetry (Forms) (Renaissance poetry).
