Sonnet · Love
Sonnet 64: When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd
1When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd
2The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;
3When sometime lofty towers I see down-raz'd,
4And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
5When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
6Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
7And the firm soil win of the watery main,
8Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
9When I have seen such interchange of state,
10Or state itself confounded, to decay;
11Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate —
12That Time will come and take my love away.
13 This thought is as a death which cannot choose
14 But weep to have, that which it fears to lose.
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“Sonnet 64: When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd” by William Shakespeare — quilloak.com/poems/sonnet-64
Quick facts
- Poem
- Sonnet 64: When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd
- Poet
- William Shakespeare
- Length
- 14 lines
- Form
- Sonnet
- Themes
- Love, Death & Loss, Nature
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 14 lines · one 14-line stanza
- Line length
- Mostly 10-syllable lines (pentameter length).
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Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- William Shakespeare1564–1616
- Source record
- PoetryDBSonnet 64: When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd by william-shakespeare, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 3073fd691344b017…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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