Sonnet 28 phrase in Sonnet 28 "to please him" refers to one of the torturers, but for a moment the reader has had planted in his thoughts an image of the fair youth as a flattery-craving tyrant. Sonnet 28 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. It consists of 14 lines arranged by the rhyme scheme to form three quatrains (lines 1–12) and a couplet (lines 13–14). The rhyme scheme is: abab cdcd efef gg. It is written in iambic pentameter, a metre based on five feet in each line, with each foot containing two syllables accented weak/strong: The two lines of the
Sonnet 15 that Sonnet 15's closing line "As he [i.e. Time] takes from you, I engraft you new" (15.14) is the "first of several traditional claims for the immortalizing power of verse." This theme of poetic immortality is continued in later sonnets, including sonnet 17's closing couplet "You should live twice: in [your child] and in my rhyme," in sonnet 18's last few lines "Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade / When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st. / So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life