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Free Shakespeare Sonnet Analysis Essay Sample
The poem ''When I consider everything that grows'' is a Sonnet poem that has got fourteen lines. It is a poem written in a traditional iambic pentameter. This sonnet has lines with ten syllables long. It also has accents that fall on the second syllable, as in the poem: ''when I consider everything that grows''. Originally, sonnets were introduced in Italy before Sir Thomas Wyatt took it to England over Tudor's period. Just as it appears in the sonnet ''when I consider everything that grows'', Shakespeare used a lot of literary device, idiomatic expressions and rhyme scheme just the way Sir Philip Sydney used during the period of the first great Elizabeth. These sonnets were posthumously published in around 1591. The poem ''when I consider everything that grows'' is a formal poem with a couplet and three quatrains.
In this sonnet, Shakespeare uses a lot of literary devices to make various illustrations. For example in line three of the 15th sonnet, (...that this huge stage presenteth naught but allows....), the word stage has been used as a literary device. This device (stage) refers to the world. Shakespeare is trying to reveal out the fact that the world is just but a place where creatures have been placed to live for a short while. The world as it has been referred to as a stage, is merely not a sorrowful place but a place to be enjoyed. Shakespeare indicates that things including human beings are merely players and were just created to enjoy their short life-time on this 'stage'. He goes ahead explaining that youths while on this stage look so beautiful that they can even expect a decay as time goes. Actually the world we live is a place to be enjoyed as it has been said in the poem, but the time of decay should not be in the minds of youths as it will discourage them from doing productive activities on this world.
The writer criticizes the world when he refers to it as a ''stage'' where the stars create illusions and melancholy. A quite peculiar difference exists between the world and the heavenly bodies. The poem rules out the fact that the sky holds something secret about the life of inhabitants on the 'stage'. As opposed to the poem the stars in the sky doesn't affect human and plant life at all. According to scientific views stars are just shiny reflecting objects in the sky. Stars were indeed created to enable a continuous and enjoyable life on the world (stage). Moreover, the universal decay is pondered in the ''stage'' especially the ruinous ways to human life and plant.
The variation of the theme focuses the attention on the commemorated. There is an irony that is reflected from the device ''stage'' though it has not been lost on Shakespeare, young people attains immortality in the process of enjoying the ''stage''. Immortality overtakes the youths as an abstraction, the nature of something wonderful, for it has not been described how this (stage) really affects the plants and human life. The world according to the poem is just nothing but a dramatic spectacle with illusory reality. The realities of our life are like fleeting scenes on boards of theatres.
The literary device used insists the changes on the perennial theme basing on the mortality which vividly engrosses the attention of the poem. The writer perceives the doom's hand in the minutiae of the process of the nature. The observation is widely extended to the youths. This has even brought bear upon the beloved youths. The world which is referred in the sonnet as a ''stage'' emphasizes the beauty and perfection possessed by young men. The world 'stage' is fighting against Time in an effort to prevent the slow decline from youth into the age and death. The sonnet is also demoralizing the youths by emphasizing the fact the youths will live shortly before decay and death approaches.
