Sonnet 67

Sonnet 67 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man and is a thematic continuation of Sonnet 66. In this poem, the speaker's anxiety about the social difference between him and his beloved takes the form of a criticism of courtly corruption. This sonnet was placed first in the pirated and mangled edition of 1640.

Structure

Sonnet 67 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form, ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The third line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:


 × / × / × / × / × / 
That sin by him advantage should achieve

Line eight exemplifies an initial reversal, of which there are several in this sonnet:


 / × × / × / × / × / 
Roses of shadow, since his rose is true?