Sonnet 126: O Thou, My Lovely Boy, Who in Thy Power
SONNETCAST – William Shakespeare's Sonnets Recited, Revealed, RelivedShow Notes
Sonnet 126 is the last poem in which William Shakespeare addresses his younger lover and so marks the end of the Fair Youth series in the collection first published in 1609. The sonnet stands out for its tenderness and the gentle tone with which it reminds the young man that even he – beautiful as he is and ever youthful as he may seem – must ultimately be surrendered by nature to all-consuming time, and for the quiet resignation with which it accepts this as the universal and inescapable truth that is all our fate. Beyond that, the poem is also formally exceptional: consisting as it does of six rhyming couplets, it isn't strictly speaking a sonnet at all, though either Shakespeare himself or somebody else has furnished it with two sets of empty brackets where a sonnet's closing couplet would normally be. And so Sonnet 126 is genuinely unique: there is none other in Shakespeare's canon like it.
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