Sonnet 73: The Power of Impermanence
William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 creates a rather profound argument that acknowledges the inescapability of the decline of youth and the love that only intensifies with the prospect of an ever-coming end. This greatly transforms what seems to be a simple and casual affection into a fierce, conscious commitment in order to cherish what is fleeting and impermanent. This poem consistently builds meaning around the motif of decay and ending through the use of three very distinct, yet also interwoven metaphors — The fading years, the fading day, and even the fading fire — all of these metaphors point towards the speaker’s very own prospects on mortality.
The initial composition immediately establishes the theme of decline through the use of comparing the speaker’s time of life in correlation to the late autumn season and the cold winter landscape. “The time of the year thou mayst in the behold / When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang / Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, / Bare ruin’d choirs where late and sweet birds sang.” (Shakespeare 1–4). The initial lines “The time of the year thou mayst in the behold/When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang” present a gorgeous visual of the seasonal change that occurs in the autumn season, employing allegory where the scattering of the “yellow leaves” represents the few remaining remnants of the speaker’s vibrant youth. The shift from “yellow leaves” to “none, or few” is a representation of the rapid and ever-ongoing nature of this loss. The “boughs which shake against the cold” symbolize the speaker’s body resisting the encroaching chill that is aging and the inevitable death.
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The metaphor in the fourth line, “Bare ruin’d choirs where late and sweet birds sang,” is by far the most dramatic and powerful image within the composition. The boughs are likened to the skeletal, roofless, neglected architecture of the hobbled church or abbey choir. The image does a great job in evoking the sense that the sacred is lost; the idea of “choirs” suggests a place once filled with “sweet birds”, is now empty, silent, and empty. The use of the term “ruin’d” not only does a job in emphasizing physical decay, but it also highlights the irrevocable absence of what was once something that was beautiful and alive. This line could easily be used to be in direct correlation to a current, melancholic state of the speaker: a beautiful structure (their youth or physical form) remains; however, the vibrant, joyful activity that once defined this grand building has long since left. The use of the term “bare” only further emphasizes the speaker’s highly exposed and vulnerable condition as his life carries on while his youth is left behind.
Shakespeare, William. “Sonnet 73.” An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art, Edited by Anne Finch and Kathrine Varnes, U. of Michigan P, 2002, p. 303.
