Today’s Poem: Sonnet 73
William Shakespeare’s intimations of mortality
Sonnet 73
by William Shakespeare
That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou see’st the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by and by black night doth take away, Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest. In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the death-bed whereon it must expire, Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by. This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
This most famous of the one hundred fifty-four sonnets of William Shakespeare (1564-1660) evokes, as we all know, both the sweet sadness of the year’s waning and the less-sweet sadness of our own prospective decline. The poem’s fourth line is, if not the outright winner, at least a strong contender for the best poetic line ever rendered in English. “Sonnet 73” illustrates, as well, why this particular sonnet form, also known as the “English sonnet,” came to be identified not with its actual originator, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517–1547), but with Shakespeare.
In the hands of the next-generation poet, this innovation on the Petrarchan sonnet form, first imported to England by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542), achieves an exemplary perfection in its unstrained iambic pentameter. The meter is so self-effacingly regular that the substitutions which begin lines 4 and 8 stand out in stark emphasis. We notice how bare and ruined the trees are, those empty choir stalls. Death, too, startles us, even in its lesser guise of sleep.
Even as the season draws to its close, the sonnet gains momentum through its three quatrains, continually upping its own stakes. Yes, yes, the speaker says, you’ll notice my autumn. You’ll notice, furthermore, my sunset, which signals the onset of night and sleep, which makes you think, does it not? You might also notice the falling-to-ashes of various metaphorical fires. Perhaps you’ll consider that the more we live, the more we’re always dying. And knowing all this — the couplet delivers the kicker — you’ll hold me that much closer before you let me go.
William Empson's "Seven Types of Ambiguity" opens with a discussion of the "bare ruin'd choirs" line:
“There is no pun, double syntax or dubiety of feeling in ‘Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang’ but the comparison holds for many reasons; because ruined monastery choirs are places in which to sing, because they involve sitting in a row, because they are made of wood, are carved into knots and so forth, because they used to be surrounded by a sheltering building crystallised out of the likeness of a forest, and coloured with stained glass and painting like bowers and leaves, because they are now abandoned by all but the grey walls coloured like the skies of winter, because the cold and Narcissistic charm suggested by choir-boys suits well with Shakespeare’s feeling for the object of the Sonnets, and for various sociological and historical reasons (the protestant destruction of monasteries; fear of puritanism), which it would be hard now to trace out in their proportions; these reasons, and many more relating the simile to its place in the Sonnet, must all combine to give the line its beauty, and there is a sort of ambiguity in not knowing which of them to hold most clearly in mind. Clearly this is involved in all such richness and heightening of effect, and the machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry.”
Very cool in a "memento mori" sort of way. I like this one a lot. I had never heard it before-- we read (and I memorized) #116 in high school.