Analysis of Sonnet 73 Essays -- Sonnet essays

Line 1* - that time of year being late autumn or aboriginal winter. Line 2* - Compare the line to Macbeth (5.3.23) my way of life/is falln into the sere, the yellow leaf. Line 4* - Bare ruind choirs is a reference to the remains of a church or, more specifically, a chancel, stripped of its jacket and exposed to the elements. The choirs formerly rang with the sounds of sweet birds. Some argue that lines 3 and 4 should be read wi gramt pause -- the yellow leaves call down against the cold/Bare ruind choirs . If we assume the adjective cold modifies Bare ruind choirs, then the go for becomes more concrete -- those boughs are sweeping against the ruins of the church. Some editors, however, choose to insert like into the opening of line 4, thus changing the passage to mean the boughs of the yellow leaves shake against the cold like the jagged arches of the choir stand exposed to the cold. Noted 18th-century scholar George Steevens commented that this image was probably suggested to Shakespeare by our desolated monasteries. The resemblance between the vaulting of a Gothic isle sic and an avenue of trees whose upper branches meet and form an arch overhead, is too striking not to be acknowledged. When the roof of the one is shattered, and the boughs of the other leafless, the semblance becomes more solemn and picturesque (Smith 148). Line 7* - black nighttime is a metaphor for death itself. As black night constrainings in around the remaining light of the day, so too does death close in around the poet. Line 8* - Deaths second self i.e. black night or sleep. Macbeth refers to sleep as The death of each days life (2.2.49). Line 12* - that i.e. the poets desires. Line 13* -... ...the west, After the sun sets in the west, Which by and by black night doth take away, Which is soon extinguished by black night, Deaths second self, that seals up all in rest. The image of death that envelops all in rest. In me thou seest the glowing of such fire In me you can see the glowing embers That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, That lie upon the ashes remaining from the flame of my youth, As the death-bed whereon it must buy the farm As on a death bed where it (youth) must finally die Consumed with that which it was nourishd by. Consumed by that which once fed it. This thou perceivest, which makes thy approve more strong, This you sense, and it makes your love more determined To love that well which thou must leave ere long. Causing you to love that which you must give up before long.