Sonnet 138: When my love swears that she is made of truth

The motif of time develops the theme of Age and Experience. Shakespeare’s sonnet reflects the societal convention that the most valuable days are the days of youth and innocence. Time in the sonnet is expressed in terms of days and years. The beloved is aware that the speaker’s “days are past the best” (Line 6). According to the speaker’s own characterization in this line, the supposed best time of one’s life is when one is young, and he is well aware that he is past that stage of his life. The temporal (time-based) term “days” can be specifically connected to age through birthdays and the passing of the years. These indicate the “simple truth” (Line 8), or the simple fact, of the speaker’s age. At the end of the last quatrain, the speaker says, “age in love loves not to have years told” (Line 12). Here, age is clearly represented by years in that the speaker wants to hide how many years old he is.