Since Brass, nor Stone, nor Earth, nor Boundless Sea is the first line of Sonnet 65 by the great English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. Shakespeare is perhaps the greatest dramatist in history, as well as a fine poet. See Shakespeare, William.
The sonnets were published in 1609, when Shakespeare had already established himself as a playwright. He probably composed the verses over a number of years, though their dates are unknown. There are 154 sonnets in the sequence, but some scholars think a different poet composed Sonnets 153 and 154, those focused on Cupid, the Roman god of love. Only two of the sonnets were published before 1609, in the anthology The Passionate Pilgrim (1599).
Like almost all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, Sonnet 65 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).
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o’er-sways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower? O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out Against the wreckful siege of battering days When rocks impregnable are not so stout, Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays? O fearful meditation! Where, alack, Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid? Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back? Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid? O, none, unless this miracle have might, That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
Sonnet 65 is among Shakespeare’s most widely known sonnets. Scholars frequently consider it a companion poem to Sonnet 64, which introduces much of the imagery used here. Sonnet 64 is a darkly pessimistic poem depicting the relentless destructiveness of time. Images that usually suggest permanence—brass, towers, land, and sea—are used to illustrate the cruel victory of “mortal rage.” (See When I Have Seen by Time’s Fell Hand Defaced (Sonnet 64).) As if continuing the argument, Sonnet 65 asks how beauty can stand up against this tyranny of time.
Both Sonnets 64 and 65 belong to a larger group of sonnets (numbers 1 to 126) that are addressed to an unidentified young nobleman. The young friend is the object of the speaker’s love and affection and inspires his wider poetic reflections. But knowledge of the young nobleman is not necessary to an understanding of the poems. Sonnets 64 and 65 stand on their own as powerful philosophical contemplations on universal themes, the most central of which is time.
Sonnet 65 is notable for being constructed as a series of questions. After demonstrating the impermanence of seemingly permanent or unbreakable things (brass, stone, earth, and sea), the speaker asks how fragile beauty can hope to last. Shakespeare uses a courtroom metaphor, one of his favorite literary comparisons, depicting beauty’s “plea” and “action” as futile legal claims. He then uses war imagery to show the hopelessness of a summer’s “breath” against the “siege” of time. In both cases, the poet represents beauty by delicate natural things (a flower, the fleeting beauties of summer). In the third quatrain, he turns to a jewel image, as if searching for a nonliving symbol for beauty. But even a jewel is controlled by time. It is held in “Time’s chest” (suggestive of a casket), and its “spoil” cannot be prevented.
Thus the only possible escape from time is the poem itself. Black ink—the words on the page—will be the only hope for eternal life. The immortality of poetry will be nothing short of a “miracle.” But importantly, its purpose is to make the speaker’s beloved, and not the poet himself, “shine bright” through time. The ultimate gesture of love is the granting of immortality through the “might” of verse.
For more information on the sonnets, see Shakespeare, William (Shakespeare’s poems). See also English literature (Elizabethan poetry); Poetry (Forms) (Renaissance poetry).
