An Analysis of Sonnet 64The formal structure of Shakespeare's Sonnet 64 is largely reinforced by the logical and syntactical structure; each of the three quatrains begins with the same extended conditional clause "When I have seen" and contains the completion of the thought expressed by the clause. However, the first quatrain also contains a second "When" conditional clause (lines 3-4), and the last two lines of the third quatrain introduce the "That" result clause for all previous lines. The repetition of the four conditional "when" clauses, and in particular the three extended anaphoric "When I have seen" clauses, heightens the expectation for the outcome clause and the final resolution. “When” clauses by their very nature emphasize the changes brought about by the passage of time, as the poet is accumulating examples of… The above is provided to make the student aware of the focus of this sonnet's analysis. The full essay begins below. Paraphrase of Sonnet 64 When I saw the richness and pride of the splendor of long ago stripped by the passage of time; when I see once-tall and now fallen towers, and even the brass, which should last forever, weathered by the mortality of time's passing; when I saw the hungry ocean flood until it invaded the coast, alternating back and forth between loss and gain; when I saw this interchangeable flow between States decay, or those States themselves (with the possible additional meaning of political States), then the pain made me think that time will take away my love too. This thought is like death to me, and he can only choose to cry for possession of what he fears losing later. FORMAL, LOGICAL AND SYNTACT... half of the sheet... of mutability and exemplifies the image of give and take in line 8. This "exchange" determined by alliteration and assonance goes against the regularity of the meter and the repeated rhymes "a " in the verses. The slight dissonance in the disyllabic rhyme of "defaced" and "down-razed" creates a slight disagreement that also suggests the imperfection associated with mutability. Alliteration and assonance occurring in two widely separated elements in the same line create a kind of tension by separating the line both in terms of proximity and together in terms of sound similarity, as in "slave... rage", “proud…worn out,” “thought…can’t,” “ruin…ruminate,” and “Time…take.” The alliterative pairs also serve to connect the first two words of line twelve ("That time") with the beginning of the couplet ("This thought").