In this sonnet, the speaker confronts Time directly, ordering it to pause and behold a woman of flawless excellence — a living mirror in which Heaven sees its own reflection. Time is told to gaze into her and see its own lost youth, as if she restores the world’s original, infant beauty. Then the command shifts: Time must move on and tell future generations the truth of what it saw. It must say that heavenly bliss once took perfect human form. But there is no comfort in this record; Time is to urge them to mourn, even to despair, because she is gone and nothing like her will ever appear again. The speaker’s awe turns to deep grief, and the poem creates an atmosphere of exalted loss — as though Time itself, for all its power, can only lament what it cannot keep.
Sonnet XVII: Stay, Speedy Time — Summary
To Time
Stay, speedy Time, behold, before thou pass, From age to age what thou hast sought to see, One in whom all the excellencies be, In whom Heav'n looks itself as in a glass. Time, look thyself in this tralucent glass, And thy youth past in this pure mirror see, As the world's beauty in his infancy, What is was then, and thou before it was. Pass on, and to posterity tell this, Yet see thou tell but truly what hath been; Say to our nephews that thou once hast seen In perfect human shape all heav'nly bliss, And bid them mourn, nay more, despair with thee, That she is gone, her like again to see.