The 154 sonnets are great lyrical poems, masterful experiments in form, structure, and language. The style is elevated, with intense metaphorical richness, a decorated tone. Their rhythm is swift, like the relentless time that runs through the verses, "never-resting Time". Sequences of images, grammatical, syntactical, and rhetorical tricks, intricate and dual meanings, vocal emphases and subtle allusions, neologisms, sudden shifts from passion to irony, a different vocabulary in each sonnet (legal, economic, medical, theological), all reveal the hard work and ensure that no commentary can capture the rhetorical and expressive vertigo of the poems, the many achievements in handling the language.

Every rendering of the Sonnets is a translation feat. Henri Soffras, known for his exceptional poetic translations, masterfully translates 24 Shakespearean sonnets, framing them with a note in which he explains the overall structure of the work, its themes and techniques.

The weather seems like winter away from you, Of time that swiftly passes, my only joy! What darkness have I felt! Everything is frozen. What nakedness of December! Everything is desolate. But it was summer when we parted, And a fruitful autumn, bearing fruits, Within it had the spring's seductive burden, Like a widow's womb whose lord has died. For me, all this harvest and blessing, Hope of an orphan, a fruit without a father; Summer is at your service, And if you are absent, the birds fall silent in the air; And if they sing, the harmony is sorrowful, The foliage is pale, winter seems to be expected.

(Sonnet 97)