Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Shakespeares Sonnet 73 - Essay ExampleThe first two metaphors refer to cyclical events the vocaliser compares his overage age to winter (1) and to twilight (5). The decrease in length of clip from a year to a day has often been commented on as reflecting the speakers inactive acceptance of his throw death, but an equally valid interpretation is that neither of these metaphors appropriately address the finality of dying. Winter takes place not just at the end of the year, but also at its beginning the Christian notion of an afterlife comes across at full strength, along with hints that even if the speaker does bank in a life after death, they do not fully derive that such a life would be far removed from an earthlike one. The use of twilight as a metaphor does represent an evolving acceptance of the end of life, as twilight refers specifically to the end of the day. It does, however, have a twin in dawn, and is also not a true ending because it is part of a cyclical event. I t is only in the final quatrain, which portrays a fire (9), that the speaker comes to realize the extent of their own mortality. Although other fires will no doubt exist in the future, each fire is an entity of itself, feeding so voraciously off its own nourishment that it gutters out. The fire is not cyclical, and offers little hope of returning to life, just like the speaker. All of the metaphors use very sensory imagery to portray their meanings. The speaker draws attention to the visual, invoking a picture of a young and old man standing opposite one another, as the old intones that thou mayst in me lay eyes on (1) the winter of life In me thou seest (5) the twilight of life and In me thou seest (9) a dying fire. It is a very visible poem, but this is not the only sense with which Shakespeare plays. The evocation of Bare ruind choirs (4) creates a vacancy of sound, the ringing silence that occurs once the echoes of a song have dissipated a imprint of shivering cold emanates fro m those boughs which shake against the cold (3). The final two metaphors conjure forth a sense of darkness, a tunnel which draws one imperceptibly into the bare night which doth take away (7), hampering the visual images from the earlier part of the poem. The reader is overwhelmed with sensory experience. The final couplet of the sonnet draws on the strong manipulations of time and ones senses to proceed the reader with the deep significance of the multi-layered command. The speaker makes reference to the visual imagery of the earlier metaphors with This thou perceivest (13) he also asks the listener to love with more intensity, devoted his own decrepitude and the listeners own similar fate. Calling upon his own, shortened time, and the extended time of bodily decay of thou (1, 5, 9, 13), the speaker imbues his sparse words with doubled intentions in order to make the most out of the sonnet. The line To love that well which thou must leave ere long (14) asks the listener to love the speaker, whose time on this earth is limited, and to love their own youth before ageing takes them. The speakers own horror of old age is tinged with fear that their younger companion is not enjoying