Love and Pathos in Sonnet 73

The speaker uses a number of metaphors associated with time to induce a sense of pity and love from his lover. He draws comparisons of himself, a man in his final years, to mainly three objects that represent the approach of death: autumn, the twilight of an autumn day, and a self-destructive fire. The implication of the first metaphor, autumn, is self-evident; it depicts the time of the year of decaying and withering of living things in the natural world and the advent of the cold, lifeless winter, which parallels his own conditions. Specifically, the imagery of a few “yellow leaves…[that] hang /

. . .

Pathos in Sonnet 73, thus, is composed by the sequence of metaphors, the juxtaposition of images of life and death, and the repetition of words. Throughout the sonnet, the speaker repeatedly uses the words “in me” and “see” to call out to his beloved one. Embedded in the metaphors are subtle but significant forms of life, which manifest the speaker’s will to live in spite of his declining conditions. Although autumn and dusk represent the end of life, both is part of a self-repeating cycle, as fall will be eventually followed by winter, spring and summer, and sunset will eventually result in sunrise. Semantically, such reiteration of words also indicates the speaker’s helplessness and desolation in his encounter with death as he cries out to the again and again, almost beseeching the beloved one to witness that the love that he has for him has not withered away like his body. As analyzed in the previous paragraph, the time frame shortens as the images shift from autumn, a whole season in a year, to sunset, which is only a short time of a day. It makes both the life of the speaker more valuable and serves as a reminder to the addressee of how death and age are affecting the speaker himself and that they will also affect the young man when he eventually grows old. By using the words “in me,” the speaker not only reveals that his lover may perceive the images of autumn, sunset and fire, but that both his physical attributes and his inner world are occupied by these three elements that all indicate death and decay. Most importantly, the fire, which must “expire,” emphasizes the inevitability that the old man will eventually exist outside the time frame given in the poem and thus become nonexistent in this world.

The couplet not only functions as a final request made to the young man to love the speaker while he is still living, but it also highlights the irony that the addressee’s love shall strengthen upon seeing the process in which the fire extinguishes itself. The yellow leaves, for example, are the only objects in the poem with a bright color. Although a weak source of light, the faint glow of sunset against the coming of darkness still indicates the presence and life of the speaker. The imagery darkens again by the third set of imagery, where the glow of a fire is the sole source of light. Furthermore, there is a significant change in the third metaphor of the self-consuming fire that is gradually turning into ashes. The singing of the “sweet birds,” for example, is juxtaposed to both images, the drooping yellow leaves and the “bare ruined choirs,” that evoke a sense of isolation and emptiness.

Common topics in this essay:
Shakespeares Sonnet, Pathos Sonnet, life death, sonnet 73, evoke pity, destructive force, life speaker, yellow leaves, line 8, life death repetition, night line 7, evoke pity sorrow, black night line, contribute pathos poem, black night, pity love, approach death,

Approximate Word count = 1666
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

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