Here is Shakespeare's sonnet n. 65. (a) I will distance it and (b) add a comment that might be useful to suggest the kind of reactions one might have when reading it. Let me know if this helps. For brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea"nor"="and not". A list. . . a slow paced list. What kind of things? what scope? what do they have in common?. . . The sentence has just begun. . .But sad mortality surpasses their power, Ah . . . none of them last. Yet they certainly seem strong and durable. Is what he says true? And anyway, so what? why mention it? The sentence has not yet reached the main sentence. . .How with this anger can beauty sustain a supplication? Aha: here's the thing: the sad pathetic vulnerability of "beauty". Very general though. Do you mean any particular beauty? It's nice to "hold a plea": a kind of legal image, no? Whose action is it that is not stronger than a flower? Beauty does not have much to oppose time. The "action" seems to continue the legal metaphor. The image becomes more particular - "a flower" - although it is still relatively general. We are more aware of the complaining speaker's tone, less of the particular things he is naming. . . Poor pathetic beauty. . . The sentence is finished. Oh, how the sweet breath of summer will stand Against the devastating siege of hard days, New beginning: new phrase. I repeat it, more intensely. It's getting better, it's more specific. Nice fresh and sensual charm in "Honey Breath". Summer is a sweet-smelling person, presumably a loved one (you would hardly like to smell someone else's sweet breath). His breathing can hardly "resist": who knows what that means? Last long enough? A singer who sustains a long note or phrase needs breath that "holds on." And "withstand a siege" means to resist a siege: so now the summer has turned into a besieged fortress or city. And the besieging enemy uses battering rams and tries to destroy everything. Images: Note that we're not totally visualizing Summer as a person; it is a delicate suggestion that slides into the next image, that of the besieged city. And let's not even imagine summer as a city. Indeed, "visualize" is too crude a term to describe such subtle images.