Classics Without All the Class discussion

In celebration of Shakespeare's birthday, let's discuss some of his sonnets in this thread.

What are some of your favorite sonnets or favorite lines?

What themes do you see? For example, in possibly his most famous sonnet, number 18 (see the title of this thread) he uses nature to paint a picture of one's beauty.

There are many themes and beautiful pieces out of his 154 sonnets. Take a look and share with us what you think and what most touches you.

I read "Shall I compare thee..." and clicked, then I read "When to the sessions" and knew that I was among good people: people like me.
My interest is more in re-creation than in recreation. The Bard worked his magic with words, so can we, and in doing so we honour his genius more. Can't we compose something like his lines that we like, and see if magic comes alive once more? I request you poetry lovers to tell me about the results of a short poetic experiment of mine about the lines:

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'ersways their power,
...
That in black ink my love may still shine bright. (29)

The quick succession of phrases centred on material agents that are strong, powerful and are finally joined in the negation of their power as they prove weak before mortality, and the rhyming of the word mortality with the word at the end of previous line are two obvious traits of the lines. In a way, the strategic placement of “sea” and “mortality” brings the half line that follows in conjunction with the first one. The first line, in itself, has a haunting quality. It keeps echoing in the mind’s ears. The meter of the first line is the ubiquitous iambic pentameter. Can there be a rhetorical prescription, to create a line of similar nature, power and beauty then? A tentative formula may be:

Since N1, nor N2, nor N3, nor N4,
But… (a noun that rhymes with N4)…

Where N1-N4 are elements in a set of things that have a quality in common, e.g. in the line above, the four nouns are strong and lasting elements overpowered by mortality. Moreover, the series is in the ascending order of their powers to withstand time’s ravages and remain unaltered.
Putting values in the equation above is the next obvious step in our short experiment. As splicing the quatrain is a sin even greater than fragmenting the octave, let the first four lines of the sonnets be produced full before we continue:

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

An attempt at the formulaic reproduction yielded:

Since eyes, nor ears, nor tongue, nor sense of smell,
But surging swell of sweetness lulls to sleep,
Can all enveloped, cloyed, dull senses tell,
When what they need to fathom lies too deep?
Or

Since neither sight nor sound nor taste or touch or smell,
But surging swell of sweetness lulls to sleep.
Can all enveloped, cloyed, dull senses tell,
When what they need to fathom lies too deep?

What do you say?