“Not marble, nor the gilded monuments”
The opening line announces the sonnet's central argument: permanent-looking monuments of stone and gold will perish, while this poem will not. 'Gilded' means covered in gold leaf, a surface finish that disguises the perishable material beneath. The contrast between stone/gold on one side and 'powerful rhyme' on the other frames the whole poem.
historical The sonnet form“unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time”
'Sluttish' here means slovenly or neglectful, not its modern sexual sense. Shakespeare personifies time as a careless housekeeper who lets stone memorial slabs go unswept and dirty. 'Unswept stone' is a floor-slab tomb-marker (the kind set into church floors and walked on), accumulating the grime of years.
- TLN 761classical allusion
“wasteful war shall statues overturn, / And broils root out the work of masonry, / Nor Mars his sword”
Mars is the Roman god of war, and 'Mars his sword' is an Elizabethan possessive meaning 'Mars's sword.' 'Broils' means battles or armed conflicts. The second quatrain widens the threat: not just slow decay, but active military destruction — the kind that levelled ancient temples and monuments — cannot erase the poem's record of the beloved.
classical Ovid's Metamorphoses “'Gainst death, and all-oblivious enmity / Shall you pace forth”
'All-oblivious enmity' personifies time and death as a single hostile force whose weapon is erasure of memory. 'Oblivious' means causing or producing oblivion — forgetfulness — not the modern sense of being unaware. 'Pace forth' means to walk forward with stately, unhurried dignity, as if in a formal procession.
historical The sonnet form“wear this world out to the ending doom. / So, till the judgment that yourself arise”
'Ending doom' and 'the judgment' refer to the Last Judgement — the day when, Christian belief held, God would raise all the dead for final judgment and the physical world would end. The couplet tells the beloved: until the day of physical resurrection, you live in this poem and in readers' eyes. The poem substitutes for bodily existence until the body itself is restored.