MB UNIUD

                             W. Shakespeare, Sonnet LXXIII

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 seest 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

Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

In the Elizabethan sonnet there are three quatrains that have the aim to express three aspects of the same problem.

In the sonnet LXXIII the problem is growing old and the poet well conveys the idea.

In the first quatrain he introduces the theme of growing old and he compares his old age to Autumn, the season before Winter, which metaphorically represents death. The Autumn becomes the metaphor for the period of men's life before death.

In the second quatrain old age and growing old are compared to sunset, being sunset that part of the day previous to night, which is generally associated to death, which closes everything in men's life.

In the third quatrain the poet moves from the external world to his personal experience. he compares his life to a fire which, being no longer young, is going to extinguish and must expire. His life is no longer as lively as the fire of his youth and he'll die in the very near future. The fire is consumed by the ashes that first nourished it.

The couplet, a rhyming one, concludes the argumentation addressing to the fair young directly. The poet invites the fait youth to love him because he is going to die.

The sonnet can b defined an extended metaphor about the process of growing old.

Old age is metaphorically rendered in different ways. It is compared to autumn. The semantic field of this season can be seen in: "yellow leaves", "boughs which shake", "the cold", "bare ruined choirs". The intelligent reader can recognise the typical marks of Autumn when the trees loose their leaves and their colour is yellowish because of the wet and the shift of the wind. Also the poet uses personifications at line four where the boughs are metaphorically compared to choirs that are now bare and ruined. they are ruined because the poet is old. And these choirs are no longer attended by singing birds and the poet can no longer listen to the sweet notes of bird singing.

In the second quatrain old age is compared to twilight, that part of the day which anticipate night. There's the semantic field of sunset in all lexical choices: "sunset", "fadeth", "west", "black night" and "take away". The use of the word "west" anticipate the idea of the poet's death. symbolically the gradual process of growing old is conveyed by the expression "by and by".

In the third quatrain the implicit comparison is between old age and the poet's age: he is no longer young and similar to a fire which is on the point of extinguish and therefore he seems to lie on the ashes of the living fire of his youth. Semantic choices like "death - bed", "expire", "consumed" well represent impending death.

The final couplet is an invitation to the fair youth to love him because his life is rather short because of old age.

The rhyme scheme is three quatrains in alternate rhyme, plus a rhyming couplet. The rhyme is a iambic pentameter ( formed by five syllables  with the alternation between an unstressed and a stressed syllable).