Sonnet 73

Sonnet 73 Explication Paper

        One of the most famous play writers, William Shakespeare, in one of his works Sonnet 73 deals with the relationship between the process of love and aging. Feelings of adoration alongside those of get older and passing away are communicated using figurative speech in Shakespeare's work. The sonnet is sorted out in a manner that as it advances the reader feels the strength of genuine romance. Sonnet 73 altogether clarifies one's mortality and the grieving that makes pathways which at last makes love end. The speaker in the sonnet finds out that he has no chance to get out of his inevitable death therefore he should acknowledge his fate.

        Sonnet 73 is essentially a standard Shakespearean sonnet meaning it its written with 14 lines in an iambic pentameter that has a rhyme scheme of abab, cdcd, efef, gg. The sonnet utilizes consonance “That on the ashes of his youth doth lie” (10) the words youth and doth have a “th” sound at the end. The sonnet also utilizes assonance “When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang” (2) the line shows how some trees have all of its leaves while some trees do not have any leaves and a few of those trees have leaves that hang on. Time is used as imagery in Sonnet 73 this is illustrated in the first line “That time of year thou mayst in me behold” (1).  The line is gives a picture where the winter comes as the narrator age is a sign of changing seasons and makes a comparison about his life. An old man speaks as if he is depressed about his situation but he as the sonnet goes on he becomes enlightened.

        Death plays a significant role in Shakespeare’s work Sonnet 73. In the start of the sonnet Shakespeare utilizes the illustration of autumn to remain for his movement in years. He is describing his own body as a tree losing its leaves in which he explains, “When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang” (2). The line explains that a few hair strands are left in his once full of hair scalp are turning gray demonstrating that death anticipates him. The gray hair was once fully brown is the same way as how the yellow leaves were once green. The branches shake when winter arrives and the branches also wobble when warm climate changes into the cold climate.

        All through this Shakespeare specifies that his one true love is a witness, and the unfaltering adoration stresses genuine romance. In Sonnet 73 Shakespeare makes a correlation of his aging to a sunset “In me thou seest the twilight of such day, as after sunset fadeth in the west” (5-6). This line in Sonnet 73 Shakespeare represents the sunset as death. Shakespeare also symbolizes going through a very long day is going through a long life and the end of the day is the end of a man's life.

        Nevertheless the sonnet advances the narrator shifts from the possibility of death to thinking back on his past. Advancing through every quatrain it is clear the once flaring flames of youth are presently diminishing as aging defeats the creator. The line “That on the ashes of his youth doth lie” (10) is illustrating how aging devours the narrator leaving nothing but ashes of his once glorious youth burned away to ashes. The ashes were the source of energy of the man’s youth, which is what gave him his youthful vitality. Throughout the years the blazes of youth gradually degrades as a blast the gust of winds constrained by being senile and in this way the man is less appealing.