Sonnet 104

Lines 1-4

The first quatrain announces the theme of beauty and its apparently enduring nature. The speaker’s statement that his friend “never can be old” (Line 1) because he looks the same now as he did when they first met three years ago is, however, a subjective statement. This is suggested by the first phrase, “To me” (Line 1) and also by the word “seems” in the phrase “seems your beauty still” (Line 3). In other words, the statement may not in fact be the case, and this will become more apparent in the later part of the sonnet, which makes clear that beauty, like all things, is subject to time and change.

The phrase “your eye I eyed” in Line 2 may sound awkward to modern ears and is sometimes seen as a flaw in the poem, although according to Stephen Booth in his commentary on “Sonnet 104” in his book Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Yale University Press, 1977, p. 333), readers in William Shakespeare’s time would not have seen it in that way. Booth notes that to a modern reader, “eye” used as a verb (“I eyed”) has connotations of “to peer at inquisitively” or “to leer.” This is not the intended meaning in the sonnet, where “eyed” means simply “saw,” “looked into” or “gazed upon.” Booth also notes that “your eye I eyed” is a triple pun. It contains a polyptoton, which is a figure of speech in which two words in a phrase are derived from the same root, as in “eye” and “eyed,” and a rhetorical device known as epizeuxis, repetition of a word or sound without any intervening sounds—phonetically, “your ai ai ai’d.”

In Lines 3 and 4, the first two of the five mentions of the number three occur, in reference to the passage from summer to winter over the course of three years. These carry over into the second quatrain.

Lines 5-8

This quatrain continues to note the passage of the seasons, spring to autumn (Line 5) and spring to early summer (Line 7). The word “burned” in Line 7 means “evaporate,” as applied to the perfumes of April flowers that vanish in the heat of June.

Lines 5 and 7 contain a total of three more clauses in which the word “three” occurs in connection with the passage of the seasons. This makes five occurrences of this number in the space of just five lines. The speaker seems to be making a definite statement that three years have passed “Since first [he] saw [the friend] fresh” (Line 8). Some commentators take the statements literally, while others point out that the number three may have only a symbolic meaning, perhaps simply to establish the maturity of the relationship. This use of the word “three” can be found in other sonnets of the period, including those of the prominent Elizabethan and Jacobean poet Samuel Daniel (1562-1619) as well as a number of French sonneteers. Carl D. Atkins in Shakespeare’s Sonnets: With Three Hundred Years of Commentary cites Sir Sidney Lee’s comment in 1907 about the three-year statements: “The period seems to have been more or less conventional among the sonneteers” (D. Atkins, Carl, ed. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007, p. 258).

In Line 8, “Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green,” the words “fresh” and “green” may be identical in meaning, both denoting youth, but it seems more likely—and more noticeable in the context of the sonnet as a whole—that there is a subtle difference, with “fresh” referring to the April flowers and “green” referencing the heat of June, a suggestion made by Katherine Duncan-Jones in the Arden Shakespeare edition of the sonnets (Shakespeare’s Sonnets, edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones. Thomson Learning, 2001, p. 318). The suggestion, if “fresh” and “green” carry different meanings, is that the friend is also, despite the speaker’s protestations to the contrary, subject to time and change, having moved from the fresh spring of his youngest days to the green of summer. Booth (p. 334) suggests that “green” may also carry connotations of inexperience and naivety, which a glance at the various meanings of “green” in the Merriam-Webster dictionary will confirm: “deficient in training, knowledge, or experience,” i.e., naïve, and “deficient in sophistication and savoir faire” (“Green.” Merriam-Webster).

Lines 9-12

Line 9, which begins the third quatrain (and the second sentence of the sonnet), marks a change in the speaker’s attitude, as the first word in the line, “Ah,” shows. As he reflects, he clearly rebuts what he stated earlier (even though the clues to this reversal were already present). Beauty is now linked explicitly to the passage of time in the simile of the watch hand—“like a dial-hand” (Line 9)—that moves inexorably on, even though the movement is so slow that it cannot be perceived by the human eye. Although “steal” in “Steal from his figure” (Line 10) is meant in the sense of “steal away,” that is, move away stealthily, undetected, it may also carry connotations of robbery, as the ticking of time steals beauty from the face of the beloved, suggesting it has no real right to do so. The word “figure” (Line 10) refers to both the number on the clock or watch dial and the friend’s face.

In Line 11, the speaker mentions his friend’s “sweet hue,” another phrase that has two meanings: On one hand, “hue” refers to a shade or color and calls back to the friend being “green,” or young (Line 8); on the other hand, in Shakespeare’s time, “hue” was also used to refer to one’s general appearance, so the speaker mentioning the friend’s “sweet hue” is another compliment to his friend’s beauty. And yet another double meaning occurs in the second half of the same line: “which methinks still doth stand” (Line 11). When something stands still, it means that the object in question—in this case, the friend’s beauty—is unmoving or unchanging, or, it can mean that the thing still stands, suggesting that it has not yet fallen over or been destroyed.

All of this punning leads to the speaker’s straightforward admission that the friend’s beauty must, in fact, “Ha[ve] motion” (Line 12) and is very slowly leaving him, so slowly that it leaves the speaker’s eye “deceived” (Line 12).

Lines 13-14

As is usual in Shakespeare’s sonnets, the concluding couplet introduces a new perspective on the matter at hand. In this case, the speaker builds on the turn of thought that began at the beginning of the third quatrain. He gives expression to his fear regarding the eventual loss of beauty, but he also looks ahead and makes an announcement or proclamation—“hear this” (Line 13)—to future generations. They will never know the height to which beauty rose, as this was embodied in the speaker’s “fair friend” (Line 1), who is identified as “beauty’s summer” (Line 14), or beauty in its prime. If the “unbred” (Line 13) refers to the generation presently in the womb or the one after that, “beauty’s summer” being “dead” (Line 14) means that, by the time these “unbred” are born, the friend will either be noticeably older or actually elderly. If even later generations are intended, the friend will literally be dead. Either way, “beauty’s summer” will pass from the scene, and the “unbred” will never have known it.