Shakespeare's sonnets can be by most considerations split into two parts. In the first part, sonnets 1-126, the speaker is talking to a young boy. The second part, sonnets 127-152, the speaker is addressing a dark lady. For the purposes of this essay, I would like to look at the last sonnet of the first part, sonnet 126. In this sonnet, the speaker is issuing a warning to "my lovely boy," of the inevitability of time …showed first 75 words of 658 total…

…showed last 75 words of 658 total…six rhyming couplets, instead of the fourteen lines of iambic pentameter of the others. However, brackets appear at the end of 126 in the place of the missing lines. It is unclear as to the purpose or meaning of these brackets, but one may speculate. Perhaps the empty brackets indicate the void of the grave, and the abrupt ending of the poem may be in parallel to death, in that it comes suddenly and without warning.