time in sonnet 55
I wanted to comment on the entry already titled "time" but I can't figure out how to comment. A lot of these sonnets focus their attentions on time, and Shakespeare seems to despise it. In number 55, he even calls it "sluttish time". He's so worried about the passing of time, flowers withering, young women getting old, etc. His weapon against time is his words/poems. He says (in #55) that nothing can destroy "the living record of your memory." I'm not sure exactly what he means by that, I think it could be one of two things (or maybe both). "You" could either be the poem itself, indestructible because of it's intangibility, or he could be addressing a person (a lover) who's memory is being stored in the poem, thereby outliving war, stone, and even death.