Sonnet notes 2

Sonnet 2, line 7: “To say within thine own deep sunken eyes”

The Young Man is being warned in Sonnet 2 that he won’t be young forever and to think about what it will be like when he is forty. What will he say then? Where has his beauty gone? If he has no child, he is asked, will he have nothing to say but within his own deep sunken eyes? Those eyes that were once bright will have become deep sunken. Not wrinkled, not dimmed, but deep sunken—like a cold, dark grave. The image summons that word back from Sonnet 1 and reinforces the winter’s chill of line 1 that will return to haunt him in the couplet: And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.