Sonnet 124 Wright suggests in his book "The Structure of Shakespeare's Sonnets" that in the first four lines of Sonnet 124 the speaker puts forth a hypothetical; if the speakers' love were the product of circumstance, then it would have no strong foundations and would be "Fortune's bastard". Being "unfather'd" the love would then be subject to "Time's love or to Times' hate". The next set of lines then alludes to the personification of Time found in Sonnet 123, in which Time has a scythe (Sonnet 123. 14). In Sonnet 124, the scythe used by Time subjects its victims to either "Times
Sonnet 23 cause of the tongue-tiedness lies in the psychology of the speaker-poet." This analysis points to a shift in the tone of the poem, in other words, a volta. The overall framing of the sonnet shines a light on the volta as well. Pairs of lines in the octave are parallel thematically: according to Vendler, "[c]areful parallels are drawn between [lines 1 & 2] and [ll 5 & 6] by "fear" and "perfect" ("unperfect"), between [ll 3 & 4] and [ll 7 & 8] by "strength" and "own" ("his/mine")." She says when Shakespeare frames a sonnet this intentionally, "something is about