Shakespeare's Sonnets

Several of the sonnets exhibit a cultural view that was relative to the time that Shakespeare's sonnets were written as well as today. They invoke a feeling that beauty is directly related to age. Society often views the elderly as unattractive. Beauty is equated, at least partially, to youth. Sonnet 12 displays this perfectly: "When I behold the violet past prime, And sable curls all silver'd 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," Further evidence of this is given in Sonnet 15, lines 1 and 2: "When I consider everything that grows Holds in perfection but a little moment;" The last line in Sonnet 62 states "Tis thee, my self, that for myself I praise, Painting my age with beauty of thy days," Sonnet 65, lines 5-9 "O how shall Summer's honey breath hold out Against the wrackful siege of batt'ring days, When rocks impregnable are not so stout, Nor gates of steel so strong but time decays?" These are but a few examples that invoke the feeling that much was related to age. Regardless of the standards the society set before him, Shakespeare found his immortality through the his sonnets as well as other works he wrote when he obtained an immortality of sorts through his words when he put them to paper.