Beginning of Essay
Eventually, time and decay effect everything. Shakespeare uses this theme in many of his sonnets. The sonnets give no hint of an afterlife and express that nothing survives time. Shakespeare used numerous methods to depict this theme including personification, ....

Middle of Essay
.... moment…” (lines 1 –2). He compares men to plants and says that they display themselves at the height of their perfection and then are slowly forgotten. In other words life is like a flower that blooms. It bursts out with beauty and then time and decay cause it to slowly wither away to old age and death. In the last couplet of the sonnet, Shakespeare gives his friend a way to win the war with time and decay and implant his beauty again. The way offers this is to be featured in his poetry. What better way to “live on” then to be read about for centuries? The cycle of the year is used to describe life in sonnet 18. Spring equals yo ....