C.1595

FROM THE ‘FAIR YOUTH SEQUENCE’

(154 SONNETS)

Sonnet VXXIII,William Shakespeare

Good old William

Metre (use of stressed and unstressed syllables in a certain pattern

Syllabic structure of a line:

Stress x / x / x / x / x /

Syllable that time of year thou mayst in me be-hold da Dum da Dum da Dum da Dum da Dum

Iamb = Iambic foot = da Dum (fixed combination of an unstressed and a stressed syllable) human heart beat

Iambic pentameter = 5 feet

FORM

Sonnet : 3 quatrains (ABAB CDCD EFEF) and 1 final couplet (GG)

Crossed rhyme and a final rhyming pairEnjambment (run-on-line) in lines 1, 2, 5

Lyrical poetry : deals with feelings of poet

William a bit older and balder

Content

1st quatrain: end of year; beginning of winter, cold

• 2nd quatrain: end of day; fading sun, beginning of night

• 3rd quatrain: end of fire; only glowing embers left

• Concluding couplet: comparison to life / old age ?

First Quatrain

In me you see the end of autumn, beginning of winter = fading of my life

Bare ruin’d choirs : remains of a church or monastery, stripped of its roof and exposed to the elements.No singing of birds or humans anymore, only bare branches sweeping against the ruins.

Time’s destruction of great monuments compared to the effects of age on human beings

Ruins (Glastonbury Abbey)

Second Quatrain

Fading of light. A faint afterglow of the fading sun.

Black night = a metaphor for death itself. As ‘black night’ closes in around the remaining light of the day, so does death close in on the poet.

Death’s second self = ‘black night’ or ‘sleep’. (Macbeth refers to sleep as ‘the death of each day’s life’)

Third Quatrain

Fading of fire. I am like a glowing ember. As the fire goes out when the wood which has been feeding it is consumed, so is life extinguished when the strength of youth is past.

The wood fed the fire, the poet was fed by his youth and passion, his desires. (metaphorical death of youth and passion , the very things that sustain a relationship with a lover)

Final Couplet

This = the demise of the poet’s youth and passion

To love that well = 2 interpretations possible1.The poets says his lover now understands that

he/she will lose her/his own youth and passion after listening to all the lamentations

2.The poet says that the young lover is now aware of the poet’s demise, and this knowledge makes love stronger because she/he might soon lose the poet.

Must the lover give up youth or friend ?