Time's mowing scythe (April, part 4)

Sonnet 60 presents to us the singer's perplexity as to time's effect on man, both physically and spiritually. Again, time is the motor of change and decay, as expresses the first quatrain by the figures of waves, in one of the metaphors most frequently reproduced in popular Brazilian language and communication. This personified figure, Time, the giver and taker of the flourish of youth, produces old age, by transfixing, delving and feeding on perfection, in order to produce weakness and disintegration before which nothing stands.

Again, against Time's cruel hand, verse and praise introduce the beloved into eternity. Poetry is here identified with hope, and as the relief to the inexorable fate of all that is young, art's perfection is proposed in contrast to the coming imperfections of the old age.

Rembrandt van Rijn, one of the most famous painters in the Golden Age of the Dutch visual arts (17th century CE), was also one of the most fruitful painters in self-portraits, and the collection of the portraits he produced all through his life, from youth into old age, is a touching and profound example of how arts can provide a beneficial reflexion on the matter of aging. The following paintings portray the painter in, respectively, 1634 (at around age 28, like myself today) and 1660 (at around age 54):