The escalating liveliness and usage of imagery in regards to the time, light, and season both supplement and contradict the speaker's disappearing body in William Shakespeare's Sonnet 73. Moving from couple cheerless metaphors to those much livelier and passionate ones within each quatrain, the sonnet takes on the paradox from the speakers perishing body with living soul to create a parallel metaphor in regards to the speakers unacquainted love relationship with the Fair Young Man.
The season fall becomes the sonnets most general metaphor in respect to the addressers aging body in the first quatrain of sonnet 73. The speaker fails to clarify which season he is originally referring to in the opening line for it only refers to That time of years thou maist in me behold (1). While the speaker mentions me, the word is followed after thou, lacking the detail that the speaker is placed within the first quatrain. However, the second and the third quatrain invert this by In me thou seest, (5 and 9) becoming more adamant and sophisticated beginning. Shakespeare maintains the superiority of the Fair Young Man as he illustrates Falls yellow leaves as something plainly existing, then claims there may actually be none, before settling on few (2). This most recent clarity develops two themes, that Shakespeare believes he still holds onto a few leaves on his tree of life, and that the Fair Young Man can intensify the energy of even a naked tree. However, the single-syllable, caesura loaded inflections within the line cant conceal the addressers robotic strut to death.
Shakespeare concludes the explanation of the leaves which were hange/ Upon those boughs which shake against the could (2-3). Hange is both metaphoric and technical enjambment that heightens the speakers physical powerlessness and the dependency. Nonetheless, this comparison of weakness transitions the lines further from the decayed and ordinary to the strenuous and specific.
