Summary

The speaker considers old love stories, the "chronicles of wasted time" that describe the courtships of knights and ladies in the past (1). He sees the way that the poets of old were able to describe the objects of their affection, and how skillfully they wrote about their love. The speaker states that these descriptions of ancient love are "but prophecies," because they all simply predicted the beauty of his beloved (9). Even these ancient writers, in spite of all of their talent, could not adequately portray the beloved. And, now that the beloved is here, in all his beauty, writers can only admire him, not actually capture how beautiful he is.

Analysis

As is characteristic of Shakespeare's sonnets, Sonnet 106 packs many themes into a short number of lines. One of the key themes is time, which Shakespeare uses very flexibly in the poem. He imagines...