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Shakespeare’s sonnets appeared in Quarto form in 1609 when it was published by Thomas Thorpe. It announced the sonnets to be “Never before imprinted” although sonnets 138 and 144 had been published previously in The Passionate Pilgrim. Sonnet 73 is written according to the English Shakespearean type including three quatrains and a couplet.
Sonnet 73 is structurally formatted into three quatrains rhymed a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-ef and a couplet rhymed g-g following the quatrains. As discussed in the Introduction, the Shakespearean sonnet takes its stylistic format from the Earl of Surrey’s variations introduced to the Italian form of the sonnet divided into an Octave and a Sestet.
The first quatrain of the sonnet 73 gives a clear picture of the season of autumn- as the symbol of old age. The second quatrain, describes the twilight after sunset, which is swallowed up by the night. This again is symbolic of the approach of death. The third image is that of a fire that is almost dead, a brilliant conceit worked out to act as a symbol of death being fed by life. The picture of the tree in Autumn is one that suggests the feelings of old age
“when yellow leaves, or none, or few”
reminds of the image of tiredness in Macbeth :
“My way of life is fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf’
Here the leaves are yellow on some boughs , ready to fall, on some branches there are no leaves at all as have fallen, and on some others boughs they are few- almost none as the last few are just hanging desperately and about to fall. There is nothing uncertain or ambiguous in this symbol of old age. The bleakness is emphasised in the next picture that the branches are shaking “against the cold”. The trembling of a leaf in a cold wind, the shivering of a skeleton-like old man are always used conventionally to suggest the wintry threshold of death. The idea is strengthened by the further image of the
“Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang”
The tree was once full of green leaves in whose clusters rushed the nest of singing birds Now that the leaves are gone, the nest have also gone, the birds had gone and the music has also gone. There is nothing but barrenness, bereft of the music of youth as old age is Of everything valued in youth! This leads to the development of the idea further in the second quatrain.
In the second quatrain, the image of the evening of the sun who has just set but struggles on with the approaching darkness is very vivid. In the twilight after sunset darkness grapples with light. The twilight fades and night “Death second self’ comes and seals up everything. The (corpse of the) light is carried among by black night. Here the twilight is not indicative of hope as dawn could be, but only a step in the direction of dark death. The death of the sun, and the death of the light. The idea of the sun as youth is quite common in Shakespeare earlier sonnets.
The third quatrain suggests most brilliantly in a fully- developed conceit the dying warmth of the ashes of old age. Here, the old age is placed concretely before our eyes- just as warm ashes of dead youth. The conceit is magnificently conceived. Youth burns with great energy. As fire burns stronger it consumes the wood quicker. The fiercer the fire, the greater the burning and the quicker the end ! Similarly the more fierce the youth, the greater in its propensity to burn itself out. Youth is a self-consuming fire- the greater the passionate activity of youth, the quicker does it burn itself out. The fire is the death-bed of life-dying fire which keeps the ashes first warm. Every moment the warmth is vanishing- as old age is slipping towards death.
As Schroeter has remarked, the " crux third quatrain, " a complex analogy W.H death of the fire to the life and death of man." Schroeter discusses the fire as if it were any blaze in a hearth, but the fire becomes more meaningful if viewed as a particular sort of fire, one which is linked with the seasonal and tree imagery of the first quatrain.
The three quatrains succeed, in the three images of the autumn tree, the dying twilight and the dead fire- in creating a sense of gloom, the shadow of death spread on them. The doom is felt clearly and there is no saving grace. The last two lines or the couplet, times to mitigate the impression of doom but fails. It appears very tame and inadequate. The young man realises that this friend the poet has become old and will soon die, so he loves him more as he will lose him in the immediate future.
Scholars and poets have been delighted to discover that the poem is also beautifully constructed, chiefly in the use of quatrains that deal with increasingly briefer periods of time: autumn, as a time of year, is followed by twilight, a time of day, and the glowing of a fire shortly to disappear. The ashes of the speaker’s youth are likened to a deathbed into the context of the whole, we perceive that it comes close to the centre, just after a group of very gloomy musings. Though the topic of impending death continues, the tone changes drastically, ending on a positive note. As we have often seen—and heard, the speaker becomes more forceful in the final couplet: here, the friend is addressed in a series of thick-clustered consonants, and three of the first four syllables are emphatically stressed. The key word strong anchors the rest of the line. The bond between speaker and addressee that had been seriously weakened just prior to this is now reaffirmed. One more surprise occurs in the last line. The speaker does not talk about his own leaving, but switches to his friend’s departure. This has at least two different effects: it suggests a sweet self-effacement of the speaker in thinking primarily of his friend’s faithfulness.
True to the way Shakespeare often includes socio-political events and discussions within philosophical musings, the image of bare boughs, bereft of birds appear like ‘bare ruined choirs’ to the poet, suggesting absence and triggering recollection of chancels and abbeys left empty and desolate after Henry VIII’s dissolution of monasteries. Of course, the immediate aim is to describe how every scene of fullness and beauty is subject to change and transformation. In the next four lines, the poet explores another analogy, describing himself in terms of ‘twilight’, the time of day just before night falls. He personifies night as one who takes away sunlight just as time takes away the poet’s life and the youth’s beauty. ‘Death’s second self’ refers to sleep, as well as night which seals up or ‘sews up’ the day. Sleep is pictured as the shadow of death, bringing relief, but not snuffing out life altogether. Thus, the poet alludes to the possibility of impending death but stops short of suggesting complete cessation of life. Shakespeare moves on to the next connected image of a fire that is rendered ash, and compares himself to the glowing embers of a dying fire, suggesting that just as a fire is consumed by the very substance that nourishes it, his life too is spent and consumed by the passage of time that was essential for its growth. Thus death is implicit in the process of life itself. The poet hopes that his images shall make the young man realise the fragility of life, beauty and existence and spur him to cherish the temporal but intense love the poet has for him.
“What is rooted in time, time itself destroys."
As Traversi points out, Shakespeare's awareness of time's destructiveness frequently caused him to recoil from love and friend- ship as corrupting and repellent in their necessary transience.
Sonnet 73 is structurally formatted into three quatrains rhymed a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-ef and a couplet rhymed g-g following the quatrains. As discussed in the Introduction, the Shakespearean sonnet takes its stylistic format from the Earl of Surrey’s variations introduced to the Italian form of the sonnet divided into an Octave and a Sestet.
The first quatrain of the sonnet 73 gives a clear picture of the season of autumn- as the symbol of old age. The second quatrain, describes the twilight after sunset, which is swallowed up by the night. This again is symbolic of the approach of death. The third image is that of a fire that is almost dead, a brilliant conceit worked out to act as a symbol of death being fed by life. The picture of the tree in Autumn is one that suggests the feelings of old age
“when yellow leaves, or none, or few”
reminds of the image of tiredness in Macbeth :
“My way of life is fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf’
Here the leaves are yellow on some boughs , ready to fall, on some branches there are no leaves at all as have fallen, and on some others boughs they are few- almost none as the last few are just hanging desperately and about to fall. There is nothing uncertain or ambiguous in this symbol of old age. The bleakness is emphasised in the next picture that the branches are shaking “against the cold”. The trembling of a leaf in a cold wind, the shivering of a skeleton-like old man are always used conventionally to suggest the wintry threshold of death. The idea is strengthened by the further image of the
“Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang”
The tree was once full of green leaves in whose clusters rushed the nest of singing birds Now that the leaves are gone, the nest have also gone, the birds had gone and the music has also gone. There is nothing but barrenness, bereft of the music of youth as old age is Of everything valued in youth! This leads to the development of the idea further in the second quatrain.
In the second quatrain, the image of the evening of the sun who has just set but struggles on with the approaching darkness is very vivid. In the twilight after sunset darkness grapples with light. The twilight fades and night “Death second self’ comes and seals up everything. The (corpse of the) light is carried among by black night. Here the twilight is not indicative of hope as dawn could be, but only a step in the direction of dark death. The death of the sun, and the death of the light. The idea of the sun as youth is quite common in Shakespeare earlier sonnets.
The third quatrain suggests most brilliantly in a fully- developed conceit the dying warmth of the ashes of old age. Here, the old age is placed concretely before our eyes- just as warm ashes of dead youth. The conceit is magnificently conceived. Youth burns with great energy. As fire burns stronger it consumes the wood quicker. The fiercer the fire, the greater the burning and the quicker the end ! Similarly the more fierce the youth, the greater in its propensity to burn itself out. Youth is a self-consuming fire- the greater the passionate activity of youth, the quicker does it burn itself out. The fire is the death-bed of life-dying fire which keeps the ashes first warm. Every moment the warmth is vanishing- as old age is slipping towards death.
As Schroeter has remarked, the " crux third quatrain, " a complex analogy W.H death of the fire to the life and death of man." Schroeter discusses the fire as if it were any blaze in a hearth, but the fire becomes more meaningful if viewed as a particular sort of fire, one which is linked with the seasonal and tree imagery of the first quatrain.
The three quatrains succeed, in the three images of the autumn tree, the dying twilight and the dead fire- in creating a sense of gloom, the shadow of death spread on them. The doom is felt clearly and there is no saving grace. The last two lines or the couplet, times to mitigate the impression of doom but fails. It appears very tame and inadequate. The young man realises that this friend the poet has become old and will soon die, so he loves him more as he will lose him in the immediate future.
Scholars and poets have been delighted to discover that the poem is also beautifully constructed, chiefly in the use of quatrains that deal with increasingly briefer periods of time: autumn, as a time of year, is followed by twilight, a time of day, and the glowing of a fire shortly to disappear. The ashes of the speaker’s youth are likened to a deathbed into the context of the whole, we perceive that it comes close to the centre, just after a group of very gloomy musings. Though the topic of impending death continues, the tone changes drastically, ending on a positive note. As we have often seen—and heard, the speaker becomes more forceful in the final couplet: here, the friend is addressed in a series of thick-clustered consonants, and three of the first four syllables are emphatically stressed. The key word strong anchors the rest of the line. The bond between speaker and addressee that had been seriously weakened just prior to this is now reaffirmed. One more surprise occurs in the last line. The speaker does not talk about his own leaving, but switches to his friend’s departure. This has at least two different effects: it suggests a sweet self-effacement of the speaker in thinking primarily of his friend’s faithfulness.
True to the way Shakespeare often includes socio-political events and discussions within philosophical musings, the image of bare boughs, bereft of birds appear like ‘bare ruined choirs’ to the poet, suggesting absence and triggering recollection of chancels and abbeys left empty and desolate after Henry VIII’s dissolution of monasteries. Of course, the immediate aim is to describe how every scene of fullness and beauty is subject to change and transformation. In the next four lines, the poet explores another analogy, describing himself in terms of ‘twilight’, the time of day just before night falls. He personifies night as one who takes away sunlight just as time takes away the poet’s life and the youth’s beauty. ‘Death’s second self’ refers to sleep, as well as night which seals up or ‘sews up’ the day. Sleep is pictured as the shadow of death, bringing relief, but not snuffing out life altogether. Thus, the poet alludes to the possibility of impending death but stops short of suggesting complete cessation of life. Shakespeare moves on to the next connected image of a fire that is rendered ash, and compares himself to the glowing embers of a dying fire, suggesting that just as a fire is consumed by the very substance that nourishes it, his life too is spent and consumed by the passage of time that was essential for its growth. Thus death is implicit in the process of life itself. The poet hopes that his images shall make the young man realise the fragility of life, beauty and existence and spur him to cherish the temporal but intense love the poet has for him.
“What is rooted in time, time itself destroys."
As Traversi points out, Shakespeare's awareness of time's destructiveness frequently caused him to recoil from love and friend- ship as corrupting and repellent in their necessary transience.