Sonnet 55 Art and Culture Quotes

Other art is subject to death and violence, but this poem exists eternally. Plus, its abstraction gives it a cool, shape-shifting power. Once people read these fourteen lines, the words are embedded in their memory and start living in there, too. So the poem doesn't just live on the page: it lives in the minds of "all posterity" (11). Take that, statues.

The speaker doesn't tell us what happens to poetry when the world ends. The beloved will be resurrected to heaven, putting this poem out of a job. But what comes next? Will poetry have a life in heaven?