By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 13, beginning ‘O that you were yourself!’, continues the procreation theme established in the previous dozen sonnets. What follows is a short analysis of Sonnet 13 – its language, its meaning, and its imagery.
O that you were your self! but, love, you are
No longer yours, than you your self here live:
Against this coming end you should prepare,
And your sweet semblance to some other give:
So should that beauty which you hold in lease
Find no determination; then you were
Yourself again, after yourself’s decease,
When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.