Sonnet 123

Song Meaning

The speaker directly confronts Time, refusing to be swayed by its perceived power to create novelty. The grandest monuments, like pyramids, are dismissed as mere repetitions of past sights, lacking any genuine newness. This defiance suggests a weariness with the cyclical nature of history and human perception, where we tend to revere the old as if it were fresh. The core tension lies in the speaker's determined resistance against Time's deceptive influence. We are accused of admiring what Time presents as new simply because our lives are short, preferring to believe in our own desire for novelty rather than acknowledging the past. The speaker rejects this tendency, seeing through the illusion that Time's