Sonnet 22

Sonnet 22 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare, and is a part of the Fair Youth sequence.
In the sonnet, the speaker of the poem and a young man are represented as enjoying a healthy and positive relationship. The last line, however, hints at the speaker's doubts, which becomes prominent later in the sequence.

Synopsis

Sonnet 22 uses the image of mirrors to argue about age and its effects. The poet will not be persuaded he himself is old as long as the young man retains his youth. On the other hand, when the time comes that he sees furrows or sorrows on the youth's brow, then he will contemplate the fact that he must pay his debt to death. The youth's outer beauty, that which 'covers' him, is but a proper garment dressing the poet's heart. His heart thus lives in the youth's breast as the youth's heart lives in his: the hearts being one, no difference of age is possible.
The poet admonishes the youth to be cautious. He will carry about the youth's heart and protect it; "chary" is an adverbial usage and means 'carefully'. The couplet is cautionary and conventional: when the poet's heart is slain, then the youth should not take for granted that his own heart, dressed as it is in the poet's, will be restored: "Thou gav'st me thine not to give back again."

Structure

Sonnet 22 is a typical English or Shakespeare sonnet. Shakespearean sonnets consists of three quatrains followed by a couplet, and follow the form's rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. They are written in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions per line. The first line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:


 × / × / × / × / × / 
My glass shall not persuade me I am old,

The eleventh line exhibits two common metrical variations: an initial reversal, and a final extrametrical syllable or feminine ending:


 / × × / × / × / × / 
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary