Shakespeare's Use of Imagery in Sonnet 73
...t on everything that has happened in the last 12 months. When the speaker says “…thou mayest in me behold when yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang…” (Line 2) he JOHNSON 2 Refers to autumn, but he also proposes to the reader that to look at him is to see all of this time go by. Shakespeare expresses the onset of aging and death through many literary techniques like theme, imagery, and wordplay. The speaker of this poem is a man of elderly age who lived a fulfilling life; possibly William Shakespeare himself. He speaks of his youth as “ashes” from the once “glowing of such fire”, which implies that the days of his youth have come and gone, and all that remain are memories. The speaker is elderly and dying, but he is not in a melancholy state of mind. A transition is made from the amount of time in the first quatrain to the second. In the first quatrain he mentions a season, or primarily a span of about three months. In the second quatrain, he only mentions a day when he says, “…the twilight of such day…black night doth take away” (Line 5-7). This is a reoccurring theme of successive references that signify time growing shorter and slowly coming to a close. Shakespeare also uses the syntactic structure of parallel phrases in each quatrain stating, “In me thou seest….” This implies that the time that has past in his life can be seen not only when you look at him, but also when you hear him speak. The tone of the speaker is not favorable towards life nor death, but of one who realizes that his time is slowly coming to end. Shakespeare writes this poem from the view of a person who has been sent to rest because of age and is now prepared for death in its final form. The speaker is not shaken by his situation, but content and ready to die. Along with theme as a significant point, imagery paints a picture of aging and death. Significant points that reflect aging and death are portrayed through the JOHNSON 3 metaphors of a tree at the end of autumn and a dwindling fire. When the speaker states that on “the deathbed whereon it must expire…” (Line 11) the “it” of this statement is one’s time on this earth because it is the only thing that will cease when we ...