Sonnet 73: That Time Of Year Thou Mayst In Me Behold

#sonnet73
#shakespeare
#apnsir
#atmasir
#atmaprakash
#love
#death
#Twilight
#WintryBough
#DyingFlames
Shakespeare's sonnets are memorable for their intensity of emotion, their spontaneity and their musical effects. According to Wordsworth, Shakespeare’s “Sonnet73” is one of the greatest of the poems for its merits of thoughts and language. There are two major themes which overpower the sonnet. They are love and death. With regard to love, the sonnet holds that Love should grow stronger with time. And with regard to death, the sonnet convinces that death should not be feared instead it should be revered and life should be valued more as it draws to an end. The fundamental emotion in the Sonnet is found to be self-pity. The sonnet also gives another important message that the power of true love can help us pass happily the trials of our lives.

In Sonnet 73 the poet-narrator compares his state with three things. To describe this idea, the poet employs the imagery of wintry bough, twilight's afterglow, and the burning out of a fire. All these images in this sonnet suggest impending death. The poet throughout the poem indicates again and again that he has not long to live. In each quatrain of the sonnet, one metaphor is dealt with.

In the first quatrain, there is a melancholy comparison of a man to the changing seasons. The poet-speaker tells the beloved that his age is like the time of year when the leaves are yellow and have almost fallen from trees, and the weather has grown cold, and the birds have left their branches. The first quatrain presents a highly compressed metaphor in which the poet visualizes some ruined arches of a church and the memory of singing voices echoing in them. He, then, draws a parallel between this ruined church and the naked boughs of early winter with which he primarily identifies his state of disappearing youth.
In the second quatrain, the poet mentions the metaphor of “twilight” and defines it as something that comes "after the sun fadeth in the west." After the sun has set in the west, the twilight appears but it is soon extinguished by the black night that imitates Death and then black night closes everything in rest. The fading of the sun in the west is indicative of death. Death is close to the poet in this second quatrain, for he imagines death twice more, first as "black night" and then as sleep, "Death's second self."

In the third quatrain, the poet has alluded his life to the dying flames of a fire. According to him, the fire is fading out because the wood which has been feeding the fire is now consumed. Similarly, the life of the poet is also fading out like those dying flames because his strength of youth is past. And the ashes of his youth makes the deathbed of his life.

Now follows the final couplet which draws the conclusion that this sense of a fast-approaching death of the poet will make the listener love deeply and appreciate whatever is left with. In other words, the poet makes a point that one’s life should be valued more as it draws to an end.

As regards the structure of the sonnet, Shakespeare had adopted the English or Shakespearean sonnet form. It consists of three quatrains and a concluding couplet in the rhyming pattern of ab ab cd cd ef ef g g. Allusions to occurrences in Nature, strong imagery of colour and light make this sonnet worth study. I strongly hope this poem will enhance the literary sensibility of the students of English literature.