Sonnet 54 like the majority of the Shakespearean sonnets has the traditional fourteen lines, which breaks down into three quatrains and a couplet. The rhyme scheme also follows the most common Shakespearean form of abab cdcd efef gg. Significantly though, Sonnet 54 is part of the collection of Shakespearian sonnets which are often thought to have been addressed to a young man, called the "Fair Youth". Generally in these poems Shakespeare would write about his admiration for beauty, the importance of immortalising this beauty and the ways one can go about doing this. Specifically in Sonnet 54, Shakespeare writes about the importance of beauty and its immortalisation in relation to truth, and how these things intersect with each other.
In Sonnet 54 Shakespeare divides his thoughts up between the opening octave and the closing sestet, coming to an explicit conclusion of his ideas in the end couplet. He begins by talking in quite pleasing language of the importance of beauty when it is complimented by truth. At the end of the octave there is a volta; for the next quatrain Shakespeare uses unpleasant imagery to describe beauty without truth. It is in the final couplet that Shakespeare explains the relevance of these opinions on beauty and truth to the young man whom the poem is most likely written for. This structure of an octave presenting an idea and the sestet containing a response with the concluding couplet being a summation was common for Shakespearean sonnets.
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