Shakespeare's Sonnet 73, also known as "That Time of Year Thou Mayst in Me Behold," is a poignant meditation on the passage of time and the fleeting nature of life. The sonnet is structured in the traditional Shakespearean form, with 14 lines divided into three quatrains and a rhyming couplet at the end.
The poem begins with a reference to the autumn season, which is often associated with the end of life and the onset of death. The speaker observes that the leaves on the trees are "death-counterfeit," or seemingly alive but already dead, as they are turning brown and falling to the ground. This metaphor for the brevity of life is further developed in the second quatrain, where the speaker compares the passing of time to a "death-bed" on which we all must lie at some point.
The third quatrain shifts the focus from the external world to the speaker's own sense of aging and mortality. The speaker admits that he too is "desolate" and "despairing," feeling the effects of time on his own body and mind. He describes himself as a "death-warned" man, one who has received the warning that his own death is imminent.
In the final rhyming couplet, the speaker offers a glimmer of hope and redemption. He asserts that, despite the inevitability of death, the beauty and love that we experience in life can live on after we are gone. The speaker suggests that the memory of these experiences can be "death-proof," or immune to the ravages of time and the finality of death.
Overall, Sonnet 73 is a poignant and contemplative meditation on the passage of time and the fleeting nature of life. Through vivid imagery and clever wordplay, Shakespeare captures the fear and despair that we all feel as we confront the reality of our own mortality, while also offering a glimmer of hope and redemption through the enduring power of beauty and love.
Sonnet LXXIII
In the third quatrain, he must resign himself to this fact. However, they were printed in a variety of qualities and with several variations. From The Passionate Pilgrim. In the final couplet, the lyrical voice defines a purpose. In lines nine through twelve he writes, In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the deathbed whereon it must expire, Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
We have to become, in some sense, the person we love. If your respect for magnificent binding or typography gets in the way, buy yourself a cheap edition and pay your respects to the author. 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, Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by. No great musician confuses a symphony with the printed sheets of music. Kennedy and Dana Gioia, p. During those years, Shakespeare wrote most of his famous work. This outline is, to me, the measure of my understanding of the work.
Some lines from The Passionate Pilgrim of 1599, which are often attributed to Shakespeare, are also relevant. Vertical lines at the margin: to emphasize a statement already underlined. You can pick up the book the following week or year, and there are all your points of agreement, disagreement, doubt, and inquiry. No one loves twilight because it will soon be night; instead they look forward to morning. Sonnet 73 is not simply a procession of interchangeable metaphors; it is the story of the speaker slowly coming to grips with the real finality of his age and his impermanence in time. It is often argued that 73 and sonnets like it are simply exercises in metaphor—that they propose a number of different metaphors for the same thing, and the metaphors essentially mean the same thing.
They forget that it is possible for a man to acquire the idea, to possess the beauty, which a great book contains, without staking his claim by pasting his bookplate inside the cover. The third has a few books or many — every one of them dog-eared and dilapidated, shaken and loosened by continual use, marked and scribbled in from front to back. The thought seems closer to the anonymous 16th. But you do not own the beefsteak in the most important sense until you consume it and get it into your bloodstream. And marking a book is literally an expression of differences, or agreements of opinion, with the author.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long. And this involves a kind of death of our own being, our own self. Even if you wrote on a scratch pad, and threw the paper away when you had finished writing, your grasp of the book would be surer. I am arguing that books, too, must be absorbed in your blood stream to do you any good. In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through you — how many you can make your own.
Shakespeare's Sonnet 73: That time of year thou...
Librarians or your friends who lend you books expect you to keep them clean, and you should. The sonnet is the third in the group of four which reflect on the onset of age. This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well, which thou must leave ere long. 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 Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by. Sonnet LXXIII 73 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.
Sonnet LXXIII · Poem by William Shakespeare on blog.sigma-systems.com
Circling or highlighting of key words or phrases. But this act of purchase is only the prelude to possession. I reserve them for fancy thinking. When that happens, he puts the book down. To set down your reaction to important words and sentences you have read, and the questions they have raised in your mind, is to preserve those reactions and sharpen those questions.
And that is exactly what reading a book should be: a conversation between you and the author. Why is marking up a book indispensable to reading?. If you decide that I am right about the usefulness of marking books, you will have to buy them. You may want to fold the bottom comer of each page on which you use such marks. Our editors update and regularly refine this enormous body of information to bring you reliable information. Perhaps Shakespeare was offering this sonnet as a charm to ward off rejection.
