A- 

Initial word: When, When 

What the poet “I” does: considers, perceives 

The object of his consideration: growth of everything, men are like plants 

B- 

They both decide their fate, leading them through time and making them age. 

C- 

“huge stage” is the metaphor for world and life, as stars decide men’s destiny on Earth as if they were puppets in a theatre. 

Page 137, ex.3 

A- “then” has the function to make the third stanza feel like distant in time from the problem presented in the first two ones. 

B- The personal pronoun “you” refers to the Fair Youth, so the poet’s thoughts focus on him in the third stanza 

C- Considering Time and Decay as destructors of youth and beauty marks these qualities in the Fair Youth even more 

D- sullied night 

Page 137, ex. 5 

A- Time and Decay are personified, as they debate about the Fair Youth’s destiny 

B- Increase and sap are two words used to refer to both humans and plants. Human beings, as well as plants, are object of Time’s action, so it is their destiny to grow old and, eventually, die. Both plants and humans share a short part of their lives where they could be considered as perfects, but, as everything in this world, even this condition is temporary as it is their fate to lose their beauty and decay. 

Page 137, ex. 6 

-quatrain 1: ABAB, metaphor; When I consider; grow, a play 

-quatrain 2: CDCE, personification; When I perceive; destiny 

-quatrain 3: FGFG, personification; Then the conceit; this inconsistency, shines 

-couplet: HH, personification; And all in war with; gives him eternal life with his poem. 

Page 137, ex. 7 

The world is a play field and Life is your rival. As you grow, you learn and understand things through many experiences, which could either be easy or not, just like learning a sport by training. Life is a challenge, as it puts us in the condition to show what we learn every day and use it against difficulties, as if it was nothing but a game. 

Sonnet 15, When I Consider Everything That Grows... 

Sonnet 18 is a poem wrote by William Shakespeare in the 16th century, it is part of the pro-creation group of sonnets, a series of poems dedicated to a mysterious Mr. W.H., where he begs the young man to get married and have children soon in order to have his beauty saved from the cruel action of Time. 

Analysing the layout, an attentive reader could immediately tell he or she is in front if a Shakespearean sonnet, made of three quatrains, where the problem is exposed, and a rhyming couplet where a solution is usually presented. 

Right from the first line of the first stanza, the Lyrical I sets the problem by exposing his considerations about time: by talking about growth it complains how time ruins things, making them age and lose beauty. Surely the poet refers to the Fair Youth, even though he talks about nature, who considers to be perfect, while writing these lines: it is well known Shakespear used to love a young man and wrote 18 sonnets in order to convince him to get married and preserve his beauty, this is the reason why the poet complains about time. Referments to natural world may relate the Fair Youth to it as the poet considers him to be as perfect as something made by Nature itself. 

The world is here presented as a stage, where people are no more than puppets moved by sky’s hands: people used to strongly believe in Astrology, as they thought stars’ movements and positions could affect their lives.  

In the second stanza the poet keeps giving proof of time’s action on the world. Comparing human beings to plants shows once again our mortality, our destiny already wrote by time and with only one possible ending which is death, for sure, written by stars which hold everybody’s strings leading them to their fate. Youth is a temporary condition, which lasts for such a little time that while praising it, it already has become a memory, highlighting the shortness of human’s life span. 

The third stanza finally refers directly to the Fair Youth as Shakespeare praises him as the most beautiful, comparing his beauty to the Sun, and the old age as a “sullied night”, ruined by time. 

In the rhyming couple, the poet explains his actions: he openly declares his hate towards Time as it takes Fair Youth’s beauty away from him, but at the same time he tries to preserve it by decanting it in his lines. 

The rhyming scheme is ABAB BCBC (even though “sky” does not rhyme with “memory”) CDCD EE, as it is not an unusual form, frequently used to replace the classic Petrarchan scheme. By interchanging rhymes, the sonnet in its totality is easier to read and gives pleasure to hear. 

Every stanza begins with a temporal referment, as it hints to poet’s battle against time and the regularity with these thoughts come to his mind, highlighting his love and loyalty to the Fair Youth. 

 There are in the text many words which belong to different semantic fields, such as the natural one (plants, growth, flowers), time (decay, time, decrease, increase, night) and sky (sky, stars, sun), all meant to describe and denounce Time’s effect on everything that is mortal, but that does not affect the Fair Youth, as Shakespear decants his beauty, making it last forever. 

Speaking about time, the only verb tense used in the sonnet is Present Simple, as these are common actions that happen every day, and the poet wanted the reader to remember it. 

The poet also used many rhetorical figures, such as metonymy, simile, metaphor and personification. An example of metonymy is the “stage” that represents Earth, ruled by the stars (this is the personification) just like he wanted to tell the reader that no one is free to decide his fate, as it is already written in sky. An example of simile is “as plants increase”, where the poet puts on the comparison between humans and nature. 

The meaning of the sonnet is a will of the poet to “save” his beloved’s beauty and youth from decay through his poem, trying to give him immortality.