In Sonnet 7, a single day of sunlight becomes a whole human lifetime
Sonnet 7 follows the sun across the sky like a king on procession. At dawn every eye bows to it; at noon mortals still gaze in admiration; by evening, as it staggers downward, they look away. The final line reveals the point, and hides a pun: without a son, the young man sets unwatched.
The poem is a single extended comparison. In the east the gracious light lifts its burning head, and every eye below pays homage to its new appearance, serving it with looks as courtiers serve a sacred majesty. Sunrise is imagined as a coronation, with humanity cast as attentive subjects.
The second quatrain follows the climb. Having scaled what the poem calls the steep-up heavenly hill, the sun resembles a strong young man in the prime of life, and mortal eyes still adore his beauty as they attend his golden pilgrimage. The word pilgrimage hints that the journey has an end, and the admiration depends on the traveller still rising.
Then the chariot tires. From its highest point the sun reels away from the day like feeble old age, pulled in a weary car, and the eyes that had been so dutiful now turn from its low track and look elsewhere. Shakespeare needs only four lines to show how quickly devotion evaporates once strength declines.
The couplet applies the lesson: "So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon: / Unlook'd, on diest unless thou get a son." Sun and son chime, so the heir becomes a new sunrise. Shakespeare's command of such classical set pieces probably owed something to schooling. Although no attendance records survive, most biographers think he attended the King's New School, a free grammar school chartered in 1553 about 400 metres from his Stratford home, where pupils were drilled intensively in Latin grammar and the classical authors.
Source: Sonnet 7: Lo! In the orient when the gracious light
