In the final couplet, the speaker makes a familiar argument that his verse can protect the fair youth from the destruction of time and aging. However, unlike the strong claims he makes in previous sonnets, the claim here is a “hope” rather than a guarantee. Instead of confidently claiming that his verse “will” stand against time, he “hopes” his verse will persist. This signals a change in the sonnet sequence: the speaker has become more humble and realistic about the power of his art.
“Confound” means to bring to ruin, spoil, or destroy. Within this metaphor, the speaker makes youth and beauty a “gift” that belongs to time. Time can therefore give and destroy this gift. Because it belongs to time, there is not the same violence, anger, or sense of violation that comes with the speaker’s previous descriptions of time destroying youth. Here the speaker seems to recognize that Time “confounds” the gift of youth as part of a continual, cyclical process.
