Tone in Sonnet 19

“Forbid” is a strong command against Time. Whereas in Sonnet 18 the speaker passively claims the power of his poetry, here he inserts the subjective “I” to challenge personified Time. However, this strong commanding tone is immediately undercut in the following line.

“Devouring time” is a powerful way to begin this poem. The consonant sounds d and t are the voiced and unvoiced versions of the same consonant, while ng and m are similarly related. These consonant pairs compliment the connotations of “devouring”—animalistic, beastly, voracious—and begins the poem in a strikingly more violent, powerful tone than the previous sonnets.