The speaker contrasts how onlookers perceive the fair youth’s beauty. Outwardly, the “world’s eye” views the fair youth as beautiful and commendable. However, inwardly, they condemn him for having dubious morals. Through the metaphor of the “rank smell of weeds” permeating a “fair flower,” the speaker describes how perceived inward superficiality can corrupt one’s external appearance. Listening to these “tongues” of public opinion causes the fair youth to grow “common,” or like everyone else.

In Sonnet 68, the speaker continues to address the fair youth with a detached tone. He uses the personal pronouns “him” and “his” as he compares the fair youth’s more natural, unadorned beauty to the artificiality of others. The speaker refers to cosmetics and wigs as “bastard signs of fair,” claiming that real beauty is becoming a relic of the past, preserved only in the “map” of the fair youth’s face. The sentiment of this sonnet echoes that of the procreation sonnets, specifically Sonnet 11, which postulates that “bankrupt” Nature has stored the last of her wealth in the fair youth. The youth is to act as a “map” for future generations so that they might understand the “beauty of yore.”

The speaker again broaches the subject of slander, introduced in the previous sonnet. As Sonnet 69 discusses, the public accuses the fair youth of superficiality. The speaker counters this claim, stating that the public only makes this accusation because they are jealous of his beauty. Through metaphor, the speaker claims that the fair youth’s beauty is suspicious like “a crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air.” Shakespeare frequently employs the imagery of the crow to describe an omen, as in Macbeth act III, scene II, when Macbeth foreshadows killing Banquo: “...the crow / Makes wing to th’ rooky wood; / Good things of day begin to droop and drowse, / Whiles night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.” The image of the crow often signals something ominous; in the sonnet, it heralds the speaker’s warning to beware false accusations.

The speaker denounces envy, personifying it as a savage beast which needs to be tied up and constrained. In contrast to the somber tone of the previous sonnet, the final couplet ends Sonnet 70 on a more hopeful note. The speaker suggests that if envy were abolished, the fair youth would be praised by “kingdoms of hearts.”

In the second stanza, the speaker criticizes the artificiality of cosmetics and wigs. He refers to the act of removing hair from corpses and turning it into wigs, with “sepulchres” being burial chambers. Instead of being sealed away with the corpse, the “golden tresses” were instead shaved and made into wigs to reside on a “second head.” Wigs made from the hair of the dead are also referenced in Act III, Scene II of Shakespeare’s 1596 play The Merchant of Venice: “So are those crisped snaky golden locks… / To be the dowry of a second head, / The skull, that bred them, in the sepulchre.” It is interesting to note that Queen Elizabeth I, especially in her later years, often wore wigs in order to replicate the red hair she had sported in her youth. Cosmetics were also widely used by the upper classes, regardless of gender. The speaker’s criticism of the artificiality of these products runs counter to the culture of the day and is possibly a criticism of the growing vanity of the peerage.

In a stark departure from previous sonnets, the speaker employs the personal pronoun “he,” instead of the pronoun “you” or terms of endearment like “my love.” The sonnet takes on a more distant, removed tone and indicates a move away from overly sentimental language in the previous sonnets.

The word “exchequer” refers to a treasury office which deals with money collected by the department of revenue. In this sonnet, the speaker uses this word to emphasize the theme of degeneration in nature. Referring to nature as “she,” he laments that nature has become “bankrupt”; her only remaining source of beauty is the fair youth, which she stores to demonstrate her previous “wealth.” This elaborate metaphor pins the beauty of the youth against the slow deterioration of time and nature.

The speaker employs anaphora, a literary tool whereby the first word of a phrase is repeated in successive clauses to add emphasis. Here, the use of the anaphora, which operates through the repetition of the word “And” at the beginning of lines three through twelve, demonstrate the magnitude of ill-wills the speaker endures. These challenges cause him to cry for “restful death.”

Through a series of questions, the speaker asks how beauty will survive the inevitable passing of time, especially if it is not as strong as “brass,” “earth,” “stone,” or “sea,” objects which exemplify stability, resistance, and endurance. His hopeful answer, which arrives toward the end of the sonnet, is that he will preserve and immortalize his love—the fair youth—through his poetry, whose “black ink” he envisions will “shine bright” in perpetuity.

These lines provide the revelation of the sonnet. The speaker looks into the “glass” or mirror, and recognizes that he has grown old with “tanned antiquity.” He has become wicked and corrupt because of his narcissistic behavior, perhaps bolstered by the jealousy he displays in the previous three sonnets. His egotistical behavior, however, is not primarily his fault. Rather, as he writes in the last two lines, his behavior is a result of his love for the fair youth. In other words, as he reveres the fair youth, so he praises himself.

Sonnet 61 is comprised of three questions which provide a glimpse into the speaker’s state of mind. In the first question, the speakers asks the fair youth whether he intends for his image to keep the speaker awake at night. The second asks whether the fair youth means to disturb the speaker’s sleep. The third asks whether the fair youth, driven by jealousy, sends his spirit to surveil the speaker in his every movement. These questions provide readers a sense of the speaker’s paranoia as he feels watched by the jealous youth. At the volta, the poem takes a drastic turn. The speaker answers his own questions with “Oh, no!” before revealing that he himself is actually the jealous one, not the fair youth. He watches his own actions “for thy sake” while harboring feelings of jealousy for the youth who is “far off, with others all too near.”

The cruelty of time continues to haunt the speaker as he ruminates on images of decay. “Rich-proud cost of outworn buried age” refers to elaborate burial structures and emphasizes that even the monuments people build to preserve their memories are subject to the ravages of time. The ocean is presented as “hungry” as it advances on the “kingdom of the shore,” conjuring images of an advancing army or siege. Unlike the previous sonnet, in which the speaker fights against Time with his poetry, this sonnet ends on a more pessimistic note. The speaker knows that Time will take his love away and that his poetry, like the burial monuments, is just as susceptible to decay as anything else.

The word “lines” is used in two ways in this sonnet. In line 4, “lines” refer to wrinkles and aging. In line 13, “lines” refers to the speaker’s writing. This sonnet marks a shift away from the theme of jealousy and returns to the speaker’s war with Time. However, as opposed to the more universal explorations of the evils of mortality, this sonnet and the two following it personalize the loss of “sweet love’s beauty.” Time is no longer just robbing individuals of their youth; it is stealing away the joys of lovers as well. However, even if time attempts to fill the youth’s brow with lines, the speaker vows to preserve the youth with lines of his own.