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 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