POETICKS

My first  question about line 12 is whether we should take “to time” to go with “eternal lines” or with “thou grow’st.”  That is, is it “eternal lines to time” or “thou grow’st to time.”  the first comes closer to making sense to me but doesn’t make it well enough.  Vendler is somewhat interesting about about this sonnet, by the way, but does not offer a close reading of it, and says nothing about line 12.

When I asked about the line at the poetry discussion group, New-Poetry, I got some good responses as to the gist of the line but they weren’t as specific as I wanted.  For instance, what I really wanted to know was what “to” and “grow’st.” mean.  I’m sure “lines” must mean lines of poetry, with hints of lineage and maybe lines in faces.  And the line is saying the addressee has been immortalized by poetry.  But how can the lines be “to” time?  A poem to X usually is taken as a poem addressed to X and this one is addressed to a person, “thee.”  I can see “grow’st” as (sort of) having to do with increasing in stature.  Also as actually growing due to the summer
in the addressee’s day although that seems awkward to me.

Brian Hawkins suggested a reading of “time” as “effectively meaning eternity, i.e. you’ll keep growing till eternity)” and thus to be taken as part of “to time thous grow’st” rather than “eternal lines to time.”  Robin Hamilton went with this, in part because the he found a strong metrical pause after “lines,” which I can’t say I do.

Later Brian added  his thought that ”to’ means ‘into’, ‘grow’st’ means ‘continues growing’ (not necessarily getting bigger, but growing, as things do in summer), and time means, rather than eternity as I said earlier, more simply ‘the future.’  So that ‘to time thou grow’st’ means, more or less, ‘you keep growing into the future.’ ”

Robin then, having consulted Abbott, A Shakespearean Grammar (1870), http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.03.0080;layout=;loc=1;query=toc), interestingly suggested that “to” might mean “against,” which would allow the lines to be “against” time, or a means of defeating time; or the addressee could be thought to be growing or flourishing against (or despite) time.

Robin also gave this from the OED in support of his view:

25. Expressing impact (cf. 1, 5a) or attack: At, against, upon.

Janet Blankfield, going with this, wondered if (battle) ‘lines’ could be something to do with a military response to ‘the enemy’, time.  I like this but find it a stretch.

I’m not fully convinced that “to” can be thought to mean “against,” but would be pleased if it did, for it would settle the problem of what the line precisely means quite well.  In the usage examples in the OED like “If eny man have a quarrel to a nother” “to” could, it seems to me, readily be taken as simply indicating the object of, in this case, a quarrel–the same way “quarrel with another” would (and few, I think, would take “with” ever to mean “against.”  Today.  Maybe then.

So I remain uncertain about the line.  Booth has “line 12, where the beloved, bound to time the destroyer, grows to–fuses with–time, as a grafted scion grows to–and thus along with–a tree.  I find this forced.  I think a metaphor like that either needs to be clearer or fore-shadowed, or shown in some way by the context that it plausibly could be there.

I also thought (or read someone else who suggested) the addressee could be growing to time as to full size–that is, the addressee is becoming time.  But that makes no sense, to me.

According to Robin, Kerrigan (Penguin) and Duncan-Jones (Oxford) both agree that the primary meaning of “lines” is ‘lines of poetry’, with a possible secondary meaning of ‘lineage’.  There are also the lines that Time draws on the human face (in 19: 10, “draw no lines there,” which Duncan-Jones notes).

“Overall,” Robin surmises, “the line would seem to mean (Death shall not brag) ‘when you grow older’ (so long as men breath and see).”  But there’d be no reason for Death to brag he’s captured the addressee while the addressee were still alive.  The context seems to require the line to say that the addressee will still be alive and beautiful after he dies, so (to confuse everyting all the more) “When in eternal lines to time” might be some kind of expression for “when you have left life for eternity.”

Someone (Robin?) made the point that “the line reads succinctly & clearly without ‘to time’ and that should tell us something.  It may be cop out to say so, but?maybe the ‘to time’ operates as a quick bridge built by the Bard to fill out the meter.”  I like that.

My final comment was that I leaned toward “thou growest to time” and hope it was a standard phrase of the time that meant something like take a place in a culture’s permanent memory or the like.