right in these contents" than in a stone effigy. The "contents" mentioned in line three imply more than just these fourteen lines. In his sonnet cycle, Shakespeare writes many sonnets dealing with the fading beauty and eventual death of his beloved friend. Shakespeare's sonnets are the beacons to the world reminding them about his friend. The problem with relying on statues and stone effigies is the danger of the elements. The irony is that nature and the elements show no concern for the artist's talent or the memory and honor of the person enshrined. Time is the enemy of immortality. The time is shown to be a defiler. Shakespeare's use of the word sluttish suggests time as being immoral. Time is also a slovenly housekeeper that does not clean up after the elements of nature. These elements build up eventually wiping clean any memory. The second enemy to the work of the sculptor is humanity. War that derives from humanities pettiness destroys anything in its path. Riots and mass quarreling are also the destroyers of immortality. The idea here is that not only is the work of the mason and sculptor destroyed but also its entire existence is "rooted out" of people's memories. War and riots uproot a civilization and the things that civilization held dear. However, war will not destroy the poets verse and thus the memory of the beloved. Even if war and fire were to literally destroy the poem it still could be rewritten from peoples memory. The works of the sculptor and the mason however, cannot be recreated. The pen is truly mightier than the sword. The last two lines of the poem are known as the couplet. It is in these last two lines that Shakespeare sums up the theme of the entire sonnet. He finishes the poem by assuring the beloved that until the end of the world his life will continue within the lines of the poem. Every time a person reads this poem and the entire sonnet cycle, "he will dwell in lovers' eyes." This last li...
