Sonnet 55 Art and Culture Quotes

The marble monuments of England's wealthiest dead people have a lot going for them: they're old, gold, and built to be indestructible. But our speaker has news for the creators of these works of art: they won't last. This poem, on the other hand, is a "powerful rhyme." It's built out of nothing and that means it's truly indestructible.

Coming after the tomb monuments in lines 1-2, this "unswept stone" probably refers to the stone floors of cathedrals where slightly less rich people bought a foot or so to carve memorials for themselves. But if no one's sweeping the floor, it won't be long until these inscriptions are completely buried by the detritus of time. Goodbye, stonework. Hello, poetry that doesn't need a broom to shine brightly.

Like time, war spells disaster for any material art. Notice in line 6 how the many O's in "broils," "root," "out," "work," "of," and "masonry" punch holes in the line itself, just like violent soldiers ripping out the stone walls of city buildings.

Other art is subject to death and violence, but this poem exists eternally. Plus, its abstraction gives it a cool, shape-shifting power. Once people read these fourteen lines, the words are embedded in their memory and start living in there, too. So the poem doesn't just live on the page: it lives in the minds of "all posterity" (11). Take that, statues.

The speaker doesn't tell us what happens to poetry when the world ends. The beloved will be resurrected to heaven, putting this poem out of a job. But what comes next? Will poetry have a life in heaven?