TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF “SONNET 73”

Considering the title the reader could understand that the sonnet is the 73^th of a collection.

It is organized in three quatrains and a couplet.

The first quatrain introduces the argument: the speaking voice says to his interlocutor that he is grown older. In the first lines he says that he is in autumn, therefore in the age before the old age. He evokes a picture of autumn that gives the idea of desolation and loss; the expression “do hang” remarks the idea of precariousness. When he says that “boughs shake against the cold” he probably would say that he fight against the old age that shakes him.

In the second stanza he says that his age is the twilight of his youth. In the first stanza human life is compared with the seasons, now with the day (the twilight is the old age and the “black night” is the death).

He feels near the death and express his feeling in the line “Which by and by black night doth take away”, where “doth” is used as an intensifying to reinforce the idea of be catch with force by Death.

In the last quatrain life become a fire “consumed with that which it was nourished by”.

His “fire” is going to die because the life that had nourished him is going to be consumed. He use a personification of the fire in the line eleven (“it must expire”) for underline that the fire is his life.

In the couplet the speaking voice praises the interlocutor's love because she loves him also if he is old.

Her love is strong because it knows that it has not much time to express itself, because the speaking voice is going to die. This love is stronger than the other loves because it is rare and true: is more difficult love an old person. Love, like life, is a natural thing and as all the natural things, has a cycle and it must be praises in all its phases.