Sonnet 73 Analysis

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Metaphor and Theme in Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 73” There’s an old saying: “You don’t miss the water, ’til the well runs dry.” We often do not appreciate what we have until it is gone. However, what happens when we foresee an approaching loss? In “Sonnet 73” Shakespeare considers this question by discussing aging and dying. He develops a solemn metaphor for old age, leading up to a final statement of the poem’s hope-filled theme: Love grows strong in the face of approaching death. First, in the opening quatrain, the speaker compares himself to a tree in winter, a tree whose “yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang / Upon those boughs which shake against the cold” (lines 2–3). Beginning this poem on a somber note, this complex metaphor goes beyond the traditional association between winter and old age to create the image of an elderly person whose thin arms and legs (boughs, or limbs) shake in the cold. The metaphor suggests that death is natural. Next, in the second quatrain, the speaker compares himself to the twilight of the day, that time of day just before dark, “after sunset fadeth in the west” (6). This metaphor suggests that the speaker is very near the end of his life because “by and by black night” (7) will take away all remaining light. Shakespeare enriches the metaphor by personifying death and night, “Death’s second self ” (8). Again, Shakespeare takes advantage of traditional associations between the cycle of the day and the cycle of life to emphasize that death is an inevitable and natural part of life. Then, in the third quatrain, Shakespeare develops a complex metaphor of fire to suggest the progression through life to death. The speaker compares himself to the ember stage of a fire. The fire, the “deathbed whereon [the speaker] must expire” (11), is now a bed of ashes. The ashes represent all the years the speaker has lived up to

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