SparkNotes: Shakespeareʼs Sonnets: Sonnet 73 05/02/18, 06*22

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Shakespeare’s Sonnets William Shakespeare

Contents Sonnet 73 Take a Study Break!

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What guys think
The Sonnet Form
hot vs. what gir
Summary and Analysis think is hot
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
Sonnet 1
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Sonnet 18
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, If Greek gods h
Sonnet 60
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. Tinder
Sonnet 73
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
Sonnet 94
As a!er sunset fadeth in the west,
Sonnet 97

Sonnet 116
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest. The thirstiest
Sonnet 129
literary charact
Sonnet 130
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
RANKED
Sonnet 146 That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Main Ideas Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by. 8 signs your fav
Further Study
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, character is abo
To love that well which thou must leave ere long. to be killed off
Writing Help
Summary: Sonnet 73
The greatest mi
Share This SparkNote In this poem, the speaker invokes a series of metaphors to drops in literatu
Share 935 characterize the nature of what he perceives to be his old age. In the
first quatrain, he tells the beloved that his age is like a “time of year,”
late autumn, when the leaves have almost completely fallen from the
trees, and the weather has grown cold, and the birds have le! their QUIZ: Is this an
branches. In the second quatrain, he then says that his age is like late Imagine Dragon
lyric or a Hobbit
twilight, “As a!er sunset fadeth in the west,” and the remaining light
quote?
is slowly extinguished in the darkness, which the speaker likens to
“Death’s second self.” In the third quatrain, the speaker compares
QUIZ: Are you
himself to the glowing remnants of a fire, which lies “on the ashes of compatible with
his youth”—that is, on the ashes of the logs that once enabled it to your crush?
burn—and which will soon be consumed “by that which it was
nourished by”—that is, it will be extinguished as it sinks into the
ashes, which its own burning created. In the couplet, the speaker 7 beloved fictio
tells the young man that he must perceive these things, and that his characters who
secretly terrible
love must be strengthened by the knowledge that he will soon be
people
parted from the speaker when the speaker, like the fire, is

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SparkNotes: Shakespeareʼs Sonnets: Sonnet 73 05/02/18, 06*22

extinguished by time. 8 books that

should legit be
banned
Read a translation of Sonnet 73 →

Commentary The Great Gatsb

explained in tex
Sonnet 73 takes up one of messages
the most pressing issues of
the first 126 sonnets, the
speaker’s anxieties
regarding what he perceives
to be his advanced age, and
develops the theme through
a sequence of metaphors
each implying something
different. The first quatrain,
which employs the metaphor of the winter day, emphasizes the
harshness and emptiness of old age, with its boughs shaking
against the cold and its “bare ruined choirs” bere! of birdsong. In the
second quatrain, the metaphor shi!s to that of twilight, and
emphasizes not the chill of old age, but rather the gradual fading of
the light of youth, as “black night” takes away the light “by and by”.
But in each of these quatrains, with each of these metaphors, the
speaker fails to confront the full scope of his problem: both the
metaphor of winter and the metaphor of twilight imply cycles, and
impose cyclical motions upon the objects of their metaphors,
whereas old age is final. Winter follows spring, but spring will follow
winter just as surely; and a!er the twilight fades, dawn will come
again. In human life, however, the fading of warmth and light is not
cyclical; youth will not come again for the speaker. In the third
quatrain, he must resign himself to this fact. The image of the fire
consumed by the ashes of its youth is significant both for its brilliant
disposition of the past—the ashes of which eventually snuff out the
fire, “consumed by that which it was nourished by”—and for the fact
that when the fire is extinguished, it can never be lit again.

In this sense, Sonnet 73 is more complex than it is o!en considered

supposed by critics and scholars. It is o!en argued that 73 and
sonnets like it are simply exercises in metaphor—that they propose a
number of different metaphors for the same thing, and the
metaphors essentially mean the same thing. But to make this
argument is to miss the psychological narrative contained within the
choice of metaphors themselves. Sonnet 73 is not simply a
procession of interchangeable metaphors; it is the story of the
speaker slowly coming to grips with the real finality of his age and
his impermanence in time.

The couplet of this sonnet renews the speaker’s plea for the young
man’s love, urging him to “love well” that which he must soon leave. It
is important to note that the couplet could not have been spoken
a!er the first two quatrains alone. No one loves twilight because it
will soon be night; instead they look forward to morning. But a!er the

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SparkNotes: Shakespeareʼs Sonnets: Sonnet 73 05/02/18, 06*22

third quatrain, in which the speaker makes clear the nature of his
“leav[ing] ere long,” the couplet is possible, and can be treated as a
poignant and reasonable exhortation to the beloved.

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