Sonnet 73: That Time of Year Thou Mayst in Me Behold

What do you see when you look at me? That is the question.

[Photo by Karen Swallow Prior]

"Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” – Simone Weil¹

This is probably my favorite sonnet to teach. I think it is one of the Bard’s most touching and most “romantic” poems, too. (My idea of romance is not typical, I suppose.) This is, after all, a poem about death.

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 ruined 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 deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
    This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
    To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

One reason I love to teach this poem is that it is one in which the sonnet form is particularly pronounced. This poem has not only the four quatrains of the typical English sonnet, marked out by rhymes and punctuation that enfold a complete thought, but in this case, each quatrain develops a separate (but related) image of the aging process, specifically, the later stages of life, which the speaker is describing (to put it rather flatly and prosaically, just to get us going).

First, the poem describes this late stage of life as late autumn, then twilight, then as a fire that has nearly burned out. If you hadn’t read the poem and were just reading these images as metaphors for the approach of life’s end, I think they would be moving enough and evocative even as these truncated descriptions. But Shakespeare does so much more than just offer a simple metaphor or simile. He fleshes it out, adds detail, mood, sound, and sense that bring out in ways we won’t find other words to express just how much this time of life is like “that time of year.”

I want to look at a few of those details, but before we do, let’s consider one other major aspect of what this sonnet is doing and how it is doing it. Shakespeare isn’t just describing how the season or time in late life is similar to late year, late day, and late fire (although even that would be worth the price of admission!). The speaker is addressing a person, someone who loves him, saying not so much that late life is like this or that, but more importantly, more poignantly, more subjectively, that the lover sees these things (this later time of year, of day, of the fire) in him. The sonnet is saying, essentially, “When you look at me, this is what you see.”

Is there any more central, more intimate, more painful, more hopeful, more yearning a question that any human being can ponder of another than this: how do you see me?

Most of us are too afraid to ask. And the poet doesn’t ask either. He assumes. Or perhaps even accuses. (I think it could be read that way.) Perhaps he also projects: this is how I see myself, so it must be all you see in me, too. I think the poem can be read in all these ways and more. Such rich insights into the human psyche are one reason this sonnet is one of my favorites.

Another reason is the exquisiteness of the images created by just a few words, words that bring wells of meaning and understanding to the theme.

Tree boughs made bare by the falling of the leaves shaking against the cold as an image of the fragility and bareness brought by age yet still retains dignity, beauty, and grace … I mean, wow, just wow.

And to liken the boughs that are likened to old age to recently emptied choir lofts once filled with creatures singing praise and filling the world with life and song. How evocative of all that is human and holy is such an image? So evocative …

The second quatrain abandons the imagery of late autumn to turn to the metaphor of twilight: the end of life is like the end of day. Twilight is interesting. It’s not quite night. And it’s not day. Day is filled with light. And night, too, has its lights—from home, hearth, and the skies. But twilight is the hour of melancholy: neither dark nor light but liminal and in-between. Twilight portends the coming of night—"death’s second self,” or the image or picture of death. Both night and death seal us up in rest—the first till morning, the latter till eternity.

Next, the speaker imagines the one who loves him seeing in him the glowing embers of a fire. Here Shakespeare offers the paradox of both a fire and a life: neither will last forever but will last only as long as they consume the very thing that nourishes them. This bleak image is made even more in personifying the fire as a “youth” lying on the ashes of his expended life. The fire and the poet become one. The opening quatrain evokes the sacredness of life, the closing hints at its sexuality and passion, and thus the scope of the human condition is suggested.

Thus we arrive at the volta, the turn in thought proffered by the couplet. “This thou perceiv’st,” it begins. The “this” referring, of course, to all that is above, all those images of latening life. This is what the “you” being addressed sees in the speaker. And in seeing this, in seeing the end of life at hand, the lover loves more. This is so beautiful. So moving.

Yet, as is usual with Shakespeare’s sonnets, this closing couplet is not without ambiguity. The last line suggests not that it is the aging speaker who will depart soon, as he surely will once death comes, but rather that the lover will (must) leave before long. It is unclear. If the speaker dies, of course the lover will leave. But will he leave before death simply because of this inevitable aging?

As the speaker describes the way he sees his lover seeing him, I think he has this very question.

Will you stay or will you go now?²

It’s the question we all have from time to time of our lovers, our spouses, our friends, our God, each other.

Next sonnets: 116, 130, and 138.

1. Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. By Emma Crawford and Mario von der Ruhr (London: Routledge, 2002), 117.

2. That is the question even for The Clash: