In the poem, “Sonnet 55”, William Shakespeare describes the permanence and endurance of his poem and its “strength” in surviving the destructions and devastations of a distressed world consumed by war and conflict. He begins the poem by describing a world of turmoil. The poem explains how the poem is everlasting and very much durable. Throughout the poem he provides countless number of examples of how the poem would forever survive. Even in the very beginning of the poem he provides an example.
He says, that not even marble, one of the hardest materials on Earth, nor do gold plated monuments of royal surpass the longevity of his “powerful rhyme”. On lines 7 and 8 he provides another example on the durability of his everlasting poem. He creates an allusion to the Roman God of war Mars, he then explains that neither he nor the fires of war could destroy the eternalness of the poem. He concludes the poem explaining how the poem will last to the end of time. His allusion of revelations, the biblical explanations of the end of the world, helps to show that the poem would last until the end of time, when Christ comes to judge Christians.
In the poem Shakespeare uses thorough imagery and figurative language in order to explicate the scene of the undying poem in comparison to some of the merely “mortal” challenges of life. He creates the scene using diction and setting imagery. For instance on the first line of the poem the poet says not “marble or gilded monuments”, creating the scene of priceless stones of artwork and gold plated memorials. He uses personification in order to reference back to the main idea of the story which is to show the endurance of his poem.
