Sonnet 106 (When in the Chronicle of Wasted Time) by William Shakespeare
Quick answer: Sonnet 106 by Shakespeare analysed: the chronicle of wasted time, old poets as prophets of the beloved, and the craft of praise this sonnet still teaches.
Sonnet 106 is a poem about reading old poems. The speaker has been in the archives, the 'chronicle of wasted time', turning pages of medieval romance where dead ladies and lovely knights are praised in elaborate blazons of hand, foot, lip, eye and brow. And he makes a discovery that flatters his beloved beyond anything a direct compliment could manage: all that antique praise was prophecy. Those poets were trying to describe you, centuries early, with insufficient skill.
The sonnet ends on a confession that completes the design: we who actually behold you now have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise. The old poets had the words and not the subject; we have the subject and the words fail.
What the poem says
The first quatrain sets the scene: reading descriptions of the fairest people in old chronicles, beautiful old rhymes praising dead ladies and handsome knights. The second quatrain examines the method of that praise, the blazon's inventory of best features, and concludes that in all of it the antique pen was attempting to express exactly the kind of beauty the beloved now possesses, a beauty the old masters would have needed for their portraits to be true.
So, says the third quatrain, all their praises are prophecies of this present time, all of them prefiguring you. But because they looked with 'divining eyes', guessing at a beauty they had never seen, they lacked skill enough to sing its full worth. The couplet turns the telescope around: and we, who see you with our own eyes in these present days, can only stare; wonder we have, language we lack.
How it works
The central device is praise by relay. Rather than describing the beloved, the sonnet describes other poets failing to describe him, which implies a beauty beyond description without the poem ever having to attempt it. It is an elegant solution to the oldest problem in love poetry: every direct compliment has been used.
The vocabulary is deliberately antique, chronicle, wights, blazon, the poem dressing itself in the costume of the literature it cites. And the logic performs a neat inversion of the sequence's usual boast. Sonnets 18 and 55 claim verse will carry the beloved into the future; 106 claims the past was already carrying him toward the present. Time's whole literary tradition becomes a single long approach to one face. The couplet then converts apparent failure, lacking tongues to praise, into the highest praise available.
Why it lasts
Sonnet 106 lasts as the great poem about the anxiety of praise: what to say when everything has been said. Every writer who has stared at a blank page over a real beloved knows its couplet from the inside. It is also a landmark of literary self-awareness, a sonnet reading the tradition it belongs to and finding a use for its own belatedness. Poets return to it whenever they need permission to write about the impossibility of writing, which is to say constantly.
What today's poet can steal
Steal praise by relay. Instead of describing your subject, describe previous attempts, photographs that missed it, songs that came close, your own failed drafts, and let the accumulated near-misses outline a beauty no single image could. Steal also the redeemed confession: admitting your language fails is only powerful if the whole poem has built the case for why it must. Do the work first, then confess. In a contest scored on creativity and language, this move stands out precisely because it praises without a single recycled compliment; the failure is the freshness.
What poets can take from this
- Praise by describing earlier failed attempts at praise, including your own.
- Borrow period vocabulary when your poem converses with older literature.
- Turn belatedness into design: let the past prefigure your subject.
- Earn your confession of speechlessness with twelve lines of evidence first.
- Read old anthologies as raw material; poems about reading are still poems about love.
Try it yourself
Write a poem praising someone entirely through the failures of others to capture them, old songs, photographs, paintings, previous poems, and end by admitting your own attempt joins the list.
Questions
What is the meaning of Sonnet 106?
Reading old poetry's praise of beautiful ladies and knights, the speaker decides all of it was prophecy, an early attempt to describe his beloved. Yet present-day observers, who actually see this beauty, have eyes to wonder but lack tongues to praise.
What is the chronicle of wasted time?
Old books and histories, the records of ages now gone. 'Wasted' means passed and spent rather than squandered: the speaker is reading medieval romances and chronicles full of praise for the dead.
What is a blazon in Sonnet 106?
The blazon is the catalogue of a beloved's best features, hand, foot, lip, eye, brow, standard in medieval and Renaissance love poetry. Shakespeare cites it as the form old poets used in their prophetic praise.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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