Analysis of Sonnet 73: “That time of year thou mayst in me behold” PDF

Preview

Summary

Analysis of Sonnet 73: “That time of year thou mayst in me behold”...

Description

Analysis of the sonnet “That time of year thou mayst in me behold”

Paraphrase

In me you can see that time of year When a few or none yellow leaves hang On the branches which shake against the cold, Bare ruins of choirs, where the birds sang recently. In me you can see the twilight that remains After the sun sets in the west, Which is soon extinguished by black night, The incarnation of death seals up all in rest. In me you see glowing fire, That lies on the ashes of my youth, As on the death bed where it must expire, Consumed by that what fed it once, You perceive it, which strengthens your love, To love that which you must soon leave.

The sonnet “That time of year thou mayst in me behold” by William Shakespeare published 1609 (Meyer) is about the speaker who elucidates the transience of life by comparing his own life with nature. In the first quatrain he says that his age is like the time of the year, where leaves fade and almost completely fall off of trees. The weather is cold and windy and the birds already left their branches. In the second quatrain the speaker tells that his age is like late twilight, where the remaining light is extinguished slowly in darkness, which he compares with death. In the third quatrain he compares himself with the remnants of fire, which burns on the ashes of the tinder that ignited the fire once. The fire slowly extinguishes as it sinks into ashes, which is created by its own burning. In the couplet the speaker tells the listener that he should perceive these things which strengthen love and that he will be extinguished by time just as the fire did.

The sonnet contains thee quatrains and a final couplet and is traditionally written in iambic parameters as the other sonnets written by Shakespeare. The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG like in most of his sonnets. The first three quatrains contain three different descriptions of the general topic “aging”, leading to the final couplet, which sums up the sonnet. Sonnet 73 contains many rhetorical devices to provide a descriptive image of transience and aging. Since the speaker compares himself with nature “That time of year thou mayst in me behold” (l. 1), he must be an old person because he describes the time of the year as early autumn or late winter, which is suggested by the metaphors “When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang […] which shakes against the cold” (ll. 2-3). The sad and

mournful leave image fits to the purpose of the sonnet, which is a goodbye from the speaker. Picturing this metaphor we feel that it is an appropriate for our own loneliness and coldness we have to endure during late autumn and winter time. In a place where choirs of birds used to sing recently, there are no more birds anymore. This clarifies the image of ending and decay in the first quatrain. In the second quatrain the bird and leave imagery changes to an imagery of the ending of a day. The speaker describes himself as twilight which is taken away by dark night (ll. 5-7). The “black night” (l.7) is a metaphor for death itself. As “black night” closes around the remaining light, so it closes around the speaker himself. As in the first quatrain, this metaphor is an imagery of death and ending. Even though both quatrains show an ending, in both cases the speaker fails to confront his main problem. The metaphor of autumn or winter and black night closing around the remaining light amply cycles. After winter there is spring again and after twilight or night there will be a morning again, but the main topic the speaker is talking about is the fade of life as time goes by, which is not a cycle but a final ending. In the third quatrain he resigns himself to this fact and compares the ending of his life with a fire extinguishing time by time. The fire burns “on the ashes of his youth” (l. 10), which means the more the fire burns, the more ashes gets created. A young fire would have almost no ashes, but his fire already produced much ashes. There is so many ashes that it makes its own “death bed” (l. 11). Unlike the other images, this is one has a final ending. Once the fire extinguishers, the ashes can never be lit again and the fire is “dead”. “Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by“ (l. 12) means that time is something important for young people, but deadly for older people. In the last couplet the speaker says “This though perceivest” (l. 13) which means that the person to which the speech is directed to is aware of the state of the speaker and that he is at the end of his life. As the person sees the speaker getting older and weaker, the speaker

should be loved by the person even more (l. 13) because the speaker is about to die soon. This is appropriate, because people feel much closer to people when they realize they lose them. The speakers intention is to make the person he talks to appreciate him more. At the end the speaker says “thou must leave ere long” (l. 14) and urges the person who is going to continue living to leave, which is ironical because one would expect that the speaker would leave by dying.

Shakespeares’ sonnets 18 to 126 are addressed to a young friend and are concerned with beauty, friendship or immortality. This sonnet does not approach to the topic of beauty, but in the proper sense friendship and immortality (Gale). He states with the sonnet 73 that friends should love their older beloved ones because they could die any time. Furthermore he shows that no one is immortal and everybody has to die as long as time goes on. The speaker in his sonnets is mainly a person who suffers from a crisis, which also matches with the speaker in sonnet 73(Gale). He sounds depressed in the three quatrains while he describes how old he is and how scant time he as left in his life. In the last couplet he appears to be determined that he will die soon. He doesn’t ask the young man to stay with him; he expects that the young man will (Shmoop Editorial Team).

Bibliography "Shakespeare, William." Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of World Literature. Vol. 4. Detroit: Gale, 2009. 1407-1411. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 21 June 2015. Shakespeare, William. “That time of year thou mayst in me behold.” The Bedford introduction to Literature. 5th ed. Ed. Michael Meyer. Bedford. 2005.

Shmoop Editorial Team. "Sonnet 73 Speaker." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 21 Jun. 2015....