I think his image here is dual though, the left-leaves are compared to a balding head. There are approximately 127 billion English language poems using autumn leaves by now, though there might have been only a few dozen in Shakespeare’s time. The first two lines open with a common autumn poem touchstone: the turning, falling, and fallen leaves. Let’s briefly look at those thoughts and the images by which we are to experience them. Modern poetry is full of a great many styles, but many of them don’t try to push so much into so short a poem.

If I was to present to this group a poem with as many ideas and loosely linked tropes as Sonnet 73 (albeit with whatever level of skill I otherwise possess) they would likely be puzzled and displeased with it. Tonight I’ll go to a meeting with three other poets, two of which are more accomplished than I am, with several published collections under their names. If one is able to overlook those two things, or simply accept them as artifacts of the form and the time it was written, the next thing I notice is how much is stuffed into those 121 words. The syntax too, is not modern-day natural speech, but then when undertaking a sonnet even modern-day poets will sacrifice some of that for sound and compression of expression reasons.

In this case it’s not so much a case of “need to look that one up” words so much as it’s the olden-days tenses, pronouns and word forms: “mayst, ”thou,” “see’st,” “fadeth,” “doth,” “perceiv’st,” and “ere.” Given that the sonnet is a compressed form (this one uses 121 words) that might put one off. The first thing one might notice is the antique language. What might we see if we encounter it this way, without preconceptions? You may want to follow along with the text, which can be found here. Since I’m not a real scholar or expert in such things, let’s take a look at it as if it was another of our presentations of lesser-known poems by little-known poets. Here you can see a facsimile-a reproduction of a printed text-of the first edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets.Here’s one of the best-known of Shakespeare’s sonnets, which means it’s clearly one of “Poetry’s Greatest Hits.” This YouTube video, part of a CrashCourse series on literature, offers a twelve-minute introduction to Shakespeare's sonnets led by young adult author John Green.įacsimile of 'Sonnet 73' from Quarto 1 (1609) Here at LitCharts we've 'translated' all of Shakespeare's sonnets into modern English to help you understand them.ĬrashCourse: Introduction to Shakespeare’s Sonnets It also includes a number of images relating to sonnet history.

This higher-level introduction to Shakespeare's sonnets explores the poems' importance to British literary history and their continued relevance today. In this YouTube video by Socratica, hear Jamie Muffett read Sonnet 73 aloud.īritish Library: Introduction to the Sonnets

More “Sonnet 73: That time of year thou mayst in me behold” Resources.

Shakespeare sonnet 73