Time

Venus and Adonis

Referenced by Venus as 'Wonder of time' in her lament for Adonis's mortality.

Chapter X

Time is implied through the imagery of untimely plucking and premature death.

I

Personified as the force that causes beauty to decay and die.

Sonnet III: The Mirror's Call to Procreation

Implied as the force that brings wrinkles and the passage from prime to age.

Sonnet V

Personified as a tyrant that destroys beauty and leads summer into winter.

Sonnet XII

Personified as a reaper with a scythe, Time is the central antagonist, threatening to destroy all beauty and youth.

Sonnet 13

Implied through references to mortality and the coming end.

Sonnet XV

Personified as wasteful, warring against the beloved's youth and beauty.

Sonnet XVI

Personified as a bloody tyrant that the youth must war against.

XVIII

Referenced as the force that causes summer to end and beauty to fade, but is overcome by the eternal lines.

Sonnet XIX

Personified as 'Devouring Time' and 'swift-footed Time', challenged by the poet.

Sonnet XXII

Personified as leaving furrows that signal mortality.

Sonnet 30

Referenced as 'dear time’s waste' and the cause of past sorrows.

Sonnet LV

Personified as 'sluttish time' that besmears stone monuments.

LX

Personified as a force that transfixes youth, delves wrinkles in beauty's brow, and feeds on nature's truths, but ultimately defied by the poet's verse.

Sonnet LXIII

Personified as an injurious force that crushes and wears down the beloved.

Sonnet LXIV

Personified as a destructive force that defaces monuments and erodes all things.

Sonnet LXV

Personified as a destructive force that decays even rocks and steel.

LXVIII

Time is referenced through the 'map of days outworn' and the contrast between past and present.

Sonnet LXX

Time is personified as a wooer that tests the young man's worth.

Sonnet LXXIII

Implied as the force behind the seasonal decay, fading light, and consuming fire that mark the speaker's mortality.

LXXIV

Implied as the force that brings the 'fell arrest' of death.

Sonnet LXXVII

Personified as a thief stealing minutes and progressing toward eternity.

Sonnet 100

Time is personified as an adversary whose scythe and knife threaten the beloved's beauty.

Sonnet CIV: The Illusion of Unchanging Beauty

Implied as the force that moves beauty imperceptibly, like a dial-hand.

Sonnet CVII

Time is implicitly referenced through the themes of mortality and the enduring monument of the poem.

Sonnet CXV

Personified as a tyrant whose accidents creep between vows and change decrees, tanning sacred beauty and altering intentions.

Sonnet CXVI

Depicted as a destructive force with a bending sickle, yet unable to fool true love.

Sonnet CXXIII

Addressed directly as an adversary; the speaker defies Time's boast and scythe.

CXXIV

Depicted as having love or hate, and as a force that fools are subject to.

Sonnet CXXVI

Personified as having a fickle glass and sickle; subject to disgrace by Nature's skill.

A Lover's Complaint

Referenced as having 'not scythed all that youth begun,' indicating the passage of time and its effect on beauty.