Metaphorically Speaking †Sonnet 73 Essay example -- Sonnet essays

Metaphorically Speaking Sonnet 73 Love is a blanket of nitid and colorful flowers that covers a beautifully rolling meadow on a breezy summer day. Similar metaphorical images appear in many illustrious poems including Shakespeares Sonnet 73. The metaphor is the most basic device poets use to convey meanings beyond literal speech (Guth 473). Shakespeares use of metaphors in this sonnet conveys his theme of the inevitable aging process. Shakespeare establishes and extends a metaphor that illuminates the poems central meaning and compares the inevitability of old age to three different aspects of nature (Prather). Similarly all the metaphorical quatrains father with either the phrase thou mayest in me behold or In me thou seest (Shakespeare 1-5). These phrases reveal the authors awareness of the natural process occurring within his body and he compares this aging process to the three natural occurrences of nature including the seasonal miscellanea to fall, a sunset, and a slow ly perishing fire. Shakespeare metaphorically relates his timely aging to the seasonal change into autumn. The first four lines of his poem read That time of year thou mayst in me behold / When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang / Upon those boughs which drop against the cold, / Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang (Shakespeare 1-4). Shakespeare compares aging and the approach of death to the coming and setting in of autumn. Guth and Rico explain that Shakespeare uses the metaphor of autumn to describe the approaching of old age as the late autumn of the speakers life (568). He gives his readers the image of the last of the yellow leaves clinging to the bare branches much comparable humans who cling to their ... ...s thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, / To love that well which thou must leave ere long before long (Shakespeare 13-14). Through these last two lines, Shakespeare conveys to his readers the grandeur of holding on to life and love while it exists for one day it will cease to be. Works Cited Guth, Hans P. and Gabriele L. Rico, eds. Discovering Literature Stories, Poems, Plays. Upper Saddle River, NJ apprentice Hall, 1997, 473. Prather, William. Essay Topics. 1 April 1999. Online Posting. English 1102 Discovering Literature On-Line Spring 1999 Syllabus. 6 April 1999. http//parallel.park.uga.edu/wprather/teaching/1102OL/essfour02.html. Shakespeare, William. Sonnet 73. Discovering Literature Stories, Poems, Plays. Ed. Hans P. Guth and Gabriele L. Rico. Upper Saddle River, NJ Prentice Hall, 568-569.