William Shakespeare’s sonnet 73 is a lament for the shortness of life and love, imbued with many powerful literary devices and imagery. The narrator speaks of the cycle of life as well as love. He begins with the transition of fall into winter, followed by several metaphors for death, leading eventually to the conclusion that we must love passionately while it is still possible.
This sonnet is presented entirely with imagery and metaphors in lieu of bland explanations. The poet uses strong imagery of nature and naturally occurring reactions as a metaphor for his fading youth. First he compares his aging, to the coming of winter which he describes as “that time of year when yellow leaves hang and when their branches shakes against the cold”. Then he compares aging to when birds cease to sing, symbolizing also the coming of winter. In his imagery of a fire, he describes how during his youth he was a burning flame, but now he is mere ember, which will eventually be extinguished with the ash of the fire. The fire symbolizes his body, which was always his life, is now going to be the death of his soul. All of the imagery he uses is also a metaphor for his fading youth. Other metaphors include Death’s second self, meaning darkness and ruined choirs, as well as the sunset, representing the golden era of the narrators relationship. Shakespeare also employs personification by giving Death’s second self, or darkness, human qualities, such as allowing it “to seal up the rest” or allowing the black night, also a metaphor for darkness, to take away something.
Sonnet 73 pairs vivid imagery with varied literary devices. The sonnet has a rhyme scheme where the first and third verses of all three quatrain rhyme at the end, and the couplet rhymes at the end. The poet employed such a rhyme scheme not only to make the reading smoother but to emphasize the words in the end. When words flow, it allows us to hear and register the emphasis more. The words behold and cold rhyme, hang and sang rhyme, and so on. The final couplet has the words strong and long which rhyme, emphasizing the words as well as their meaning within the couplet.
Looking at these words without even considering the meaning of the poem, we can see how they relate to the central theme of a fading youth. Cold which could symbolize darkness and death, day and away, meaning the day fades show how youth escapes him. The couplet ends with the two rhyming words strong and long, which represent a sort of moral to the sonnet. The author takes advantage of the last couplet to explain the significance of the idea of fading youth from the first quatrains. He explains that because of the inevitability of death, the young man which listens to the poet must love him stronger and more passionately. On a broader scale, it suggests that we should love unconditionally while we can, because eventually it will fade and we will die. In general this form of a poem allows him to show the cycle of life. At first he uses the metaphor of winter and the coming of night to symbolize the coming of old age. These are both two are cycles and thus repeat every day or every year. So at first while we age, a new day is a new beginning. In the last quatrain though he uses the metaphor of fire, which takes away the cycle aspect and shows the fact that eventually there comes a finite end. Finally the poet describes a fire, which has an ultimate end. The poet also employs a cycle of using the terms you and me to show the interaction of the listener and himself.
In conclusion, the narrator begins to notice how death and love are intertwined and how death eventually separates two lovers. In the end he comes to a realization that though contradictory, the two can coexist. Realizing the inevitability of death, we can in fact love deeper, which does not have to be considered a bad thing.
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