Sonnet 73: That time of year thou mayst in me behold
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
 
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 see'st 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,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
 
 
It’s hard to believe this series has been going for three years and this is our first foray into Shakespeare! Shakespeare’s name is synonymous with English poetry. So I guess it’s about time.
 
William Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564 in Stratford upon Avon. He lived in a tumultuous age. His family was caught up in the religious upheaval that saw England go from Catholic to Protestant to Catholic to Protestant in the space of 40 years. While Shakespeare was outwardly a conforming member of the Church of England, there is wide speculation that his family may have maintained their Catholic faith through Shakespeare’s lifetime and even into the next generation – Shakespeare’s daughter Susanna was publicly named on a list of those who failed to make their Easter communion in the Anglican Church – a list that was intended to put pressure on those who clung to the Roman Catholic faith.
 
Shakespeare’s relatively short life—just 52 years – was extraordinarily productive. In addition to his 39 plays, he wrote poems, including 154 sonnets.
 
The sonnets are, in a way, Shakespeare’s pandemic project. In June of 1592, the theaters were closed because of an outbreak of the plague and civil unrest. They remained closed for two years. What was a full-time playwright and actor to do? Shakespeare pivoted—he began writing poems of the type that were popular at the time, including sonnets. A contemporary account mentioned that Shakespeare’s “sugared sonnets” circulated among his friends in the 1590s. They were published during Shakespeare’s lifetime in 1609.
 
The sonnet Scott read is typical Elizabethan poetry in some ways. The form is that of the “English sonnet” – also known as the “Shakespearean sonnet” – with three quatrains followed by a couplet, 14 lines of iambic pentameter. Also quite typical, the poem is addressed by an individual, to another individual—“I” and “thou”—as though we are overhearing a private conversation or reading a letter. (Whether the sonnets are genuinely autobiographical or simply using the form is an open question!) And, the poem uses very conventional imagery of nature, sleep, and fire, common in poetry of the time. But this poem upsets expectations as well.
 
“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, the speaker says, you see the season of autumn, when the leaves have fallen, when the branches shake in the wind. The trees are like “bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang” – in their ruins, they call to mind what they once were.
 
The second quatrain makes the same point with a new image: “in me thou see’st the twilight of such day / As after sunset fadeth in the west.” The speaker is in the twilight of the day; soon, “black night” will absorb the last light of day, and “seal up all in rest.”
 
The third quatrain repeats the theme with a third image: “In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire / That on the ashes of his youth doth lie.” He is at the point in life where youth has almost burned out—it lies in ashes, but the fire still glows, for now.
 
The end of the year, the end of the day, the end of the fire. None of the images Shakespeare has chosen is too surprising, nor is the general subject: in many of his sonnets, Shakespeare touches on youth and age. But this poem is different. Instead of focusing on the youth of another person, the speaker focuses on his own age. In each of the three images, he is at a time of transition – autumn, when the memory of summer is still present, even as winter winds have arrived. Sunset, between a brilliant day and a dark night. And fire, which still glows, though not as brightly as it once did.
 
In the hands of a more conventional mind, at this point in the sonnet the speaker would probably be getting nervous that his love won’t love him as much as when he was younger, and make the point that love, too, fades with time. Instead, we get a total reversal of that idea. “This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong, / To love that well which thou must leave ere long.” Instead of quenching love, this autumnal moment only makes love stronger. The signs that a parting is imminent don’t weaken love; they intensify it.
 
When we talk about aging, we usually focus on change and diminishment. This sonnet offers a different way of looking at getting older. This speaker recognizes that the autumn of life brings deeper feeling and an increase in love.
 
As we read in Proverbs, “The glory of the young is their strength, / and the dignity of the old is gray hair” (20:29). Every time of life has its beauty.