Sonnet 104

Lines 1-4

The first quatrain announces the theme of beauty and its apparently enduring nature. The speaker’s statement that his friend “never can be old” (Line 1) because he looks the same now as he did when they first met three years ago is, however, a subjective statement. This is suggested by the first phrase, “To me” (Line 1) and also by the word “seems” in the phrase “seems your beauty still” (Line 3). In other words, the statement may not in fact be the case, and this will become more apparent in the later part of the sonnet, which makes clear that beauty, like all things, is subject to time and change.

The phrase “your eye I eyed” in Line 2 may sound awkward to modern ears and is sometimes seen as a flaw in the poem, although according to Stephen Booth in his commentary on “Sonnet 104” in his book Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Yale University Press, 1977, p. 333), readers in William Shakespeare’s time would not have seen it in that way. Booth notes that to a modern reader, “eye” used as a verb (“I eyed”) has connotations of “to peer at inquisitively” or “to leer.