The speaker of sonnet 5 dramatizes the young man's youth as summer and compares old age to horrid winter, while portraying offspring as the distillation of flowers.
First Quatrain
In the first quatrain of "Those hours, that with gentle work did frame," the speaker reminds the young man that the same passage of time that worked its magic to make the lad a handsome, pleasing specimen will become a tyrannical dictator and will undo his pleasing, youthful features. The young man is described as extremely attractive so that “every eye doth dwell” upon him. The hours of time have worked gently in “fram[ing] / The lovely gaze.” But it will be ruthless in changing his youth to old age. Again, the speaker is employing the passage of time as an argument to persuade the young man to marry and produce pleasing offspring, who will be heir to the young man’s beauty.
Second Quatrain
In the second quatrain, the speaker calls time “never-resting” and compares summer to winter. But he modifies winter with the adjective “hideous.” And winter is hideous because the sap in the trees can no longer flow smoothly, being “check’d with frost.” He is metaphorically comparing the sap in trees in winter, when the cold prevents it from flowing smoothly, to the young man’s blood in old age.
And not only does the sap stop flowing in the trees, but also the “lusty leaves [are] quite gone,” with “Beauty o’ersnow’d and bareness every where.” The “lusty leaves” refers to the outer physical attractiveness of the lad, his features that reflect that beauty to which so many people are drawn. The young man should use his “summer” or his young adulthood, before “winter” or old age render his blood lethargic and modifies his pleasing features to barren and withered ugliness.
Third Quatrain
The speaker becomes very creative in the third quatrain. The speaker dramatizes summer’s essence as being preserved by the distillation process of flowers to make perfume, or perhaps he is referring to dandelion wine into alcohol, “A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass.” But without this offspring of summer, the beauty that had existed would have vanished, and no one would remember that summer had ever been. By comparing the product of summer to perfume or wine, the speaker again hopes to show the young man that producing his likeness would be a great gift to the world and to himself.
The Couplet
In the couplet, the speaker again refers to the perfume/alcohol produced in summer; about the “flowers” that were distilled to make the “liquid prisoner,” the speaker says that even though those flowers were accosted by winter, they offered only beauty to the eye, while their “substance” or essence, meaning the liquid they provided, “still lives sweet.” The speaker continues his hope that his persuasion can appeal to the young man’s vanity to want to preserve his young.
Other articles on Shakespeare:
Sonnet Commentaries
Sonnet 1, Sonnet 2, Sonnet 3, Sonnet 4, Sonnet 5, Sonnet 6, Sonnet 7, Sonnet 8, Sonnet 9, Sonnet 10, Sonnet 11, Sonnet 12, Sonnet 18, Sonnet 19, Sonnet 116, Sonnet 126, Sonnet 130
