Compare William Shakespeare’s Sonnets 12 and 73

Compare William Shakespeare’s Sonnets 12 and 73

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) wrote a group of 154 sonnets between

1592 and 1597, which were compiled and published under the title

'Shakespeare's Sonnets' in 1609. The 154 poems are divided into two

groups, a larger set, consisting of sonnets 1-126 which are addressed

by the poet to a dear young man, the smaller group of sonnets 127-154

address another persona, a 'dark lady'. The larger set of sonnets

display a deliberate sequence, a sonnet cycle akin to that used a

decade earlier by the English poet Phillip Sidney (1554-1586) in

'Astrophel and Stella'. The themes of love and infidelity are dominant

in both sets of poems, in the larger grouping; these themes are

interwoven with symbols of beauty, immortality, and the ravages of

time. Lyrical speculations of poetry's power to maintain bonds of love

and to revere the beloved can also be found in the larger collection

of sonnets.

Due to the great amount of Shakespeare's work and its consistent

quality, his particular style became known as 'the Shakespearean

sonnet form'. A typical Shakespearean sonnet has fourteen lines,

broken down into three quatrains and ending with a rhyming couplet. In

each quatrain a different subject will be conversed and described, the

subject is then changed at the start of each new quatrain. The

quatrain allows the theme of the sonnet to be developed. The ending

couplet allows what was discussed in the forerunning quatrains to be

resolved. A Shakespearean sonnet has the rhyming pattern

ABABCDCDEFEFGG.

Sonnet 12 talks about how time changes the body's image, it also sees

the writer thinking about death quite bluntly. He only seems to see

that life is short and one life must...

... middle of paper ...

...tes of time must go,

Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake

And die as fast as they see others grow;

And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence

Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Sonnet 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.

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.