The sonnet was rendered in prose paraphrase by A. L. Rowse as: O you, my lovely boy, who hold in your power Time's hour-glass and his sickle—you who wane as you grow older and in that show your friends withering as you yourself grow up: if Nature, sovereign mistress over chaos, as you go onwards will ever pluck you back, she keeps you to demonstrate her power to hold up time.

Instead of 14 lines rhyming abab cdcd efef gg, the poem is composed of six couplets (aa bb cc dd ee ff).

Sethna has argued that Sonnet 126 was handed to William Herbert (the "Fair Youth" in his view) just before his 27th birthday, completing the period of their 9-year friendship with words that were clear, allusive, highly emotional and deeply pensive.

[11] Slightly paralleled by A. L. Rowse, author of Shakespeare's Sonnets: The Problems Solved, lines 3-4 are interpreted as alluding to the youth's beauty as a contrast with his friends.

Rowse also suggests that this idea may also imply a further consistency; Shakespeare's concern is with the ebb and flow of things, their waxing and waning, perhaps displaying the influence of constant Ovidian thought.

These meanings join the tangled double entendres in "Enter [Endure, End here, And hear] Quietuses two [to] render thee" to suggest such readings of line 12 as "You're suffering a melt-down over this couplet" and "Nature's two 'Quietuses' intrude here to depict you".

A different kind of runic wit occurs in the punning conceit "Enter Quietuses to [two]" where two abstractions—the empty couplet lines—hover like hooded figures in a medieval morality.

Sonnet 126 deals with a marked lapse of time and leads the reader to the realization that the relationship between author and subject has continued on for years but has now begun to wane or fizzle out.

[19] While previous sonnets of this sequence act to console against attempt to circumvent time's inevitable destructive victory, scholars have argued that 126 concedes the point.

Instead of seeking consolations for the destruction of beauty, the final three couplets simply warn the young man of nature's inevitable defeat at the hands of time".

[21] In accepting the reality of his unrequited, and ultimately shifting, love, the speaker is able to find peace, to some extent, in his relationship with the boy.