William Shakespeare Diction

Words: 785
Pages: 4

An individual cherishes his or her childhood, adolescence and adulthood, reminiscing over the memories and fun experiences. However, once he or she reaches the threshold and enters the world of “old,” he or she starts to feel the end of the life cycle. In William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet LXXIII,” the speaker is realizing his old age and that his life is going to come to an end. The couplet serves to support the speaker by describing the growing importance of love. Shakespeare employs metaphors, structure of a sonnet, and personifications in order to further justify the themes of dead and strength of love. The poet’s utilizes metaphors in order to substantiate the themes of death and love. In the first quatrain, the speaker is compared to the yellow leaves. Shakespeare reveals this metaphor when the poem states, “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 …show more content…
The poem is a Shakespearean sonnet consistent of three quatrains and a couplet. Each quatrain consists of one long sentence. According to the poem, “That time of year thou mayst in be 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.” The whole quatrain consisted of a few commas and one period. The long sentence signifies the long life the speaker has lived and his old age. The couplet, by contrast, is only two sentences. The length of the couplet signifies that the speaker will not live too long and that he will die. Subsequently, the three quatrains and couplet each contain an image that connects to the speaker. The images of the three quatrains and couplet are yellow leaves, sunset, fire, and love, respectively. Each of these images are deteriorating or coming to its end. Similarly, the speaker is coming to his