Marvell’s To his Coy Mistress: the poet meets the pants man

Andrew Marvell’s poem To his Coy Mistress is probably the most famous metaphysical poem in the English language. In general terms, the metaphysical deals with philosophical issues such as the nature of life, love and death. That is, things that are above the physical nature of the world. In poetry this is often done by using conceits (or metaphors) that draw parallels, and explore the tensions between, the physical and metaphysical worlds.

In this poem, the poet bemoans the fact that his girlfriend will not have sex with him and that time is passing and they will soon both be dead.

The first stanza of the poem describes what the poet and his mistress would do if they had limitless time:

Had we but world enough and time, 
This coyness, lady, were no crime. 

Coy has two meanings. The first is backwardness in the face of amorous advances. But the second meaning is as a verb meaning to stroke or to caress. The portrait of the lady above, which is used for an edition of Marvell’s work, is nothing if not ambiguous. It is left to the reader to decide which form of coyness the poet is objecting to.

He goes on describing how they could spend their time wandering the world and how

My vegetable love should grow 
Vaster than empires and more slow; 

There is a lot of academic discussion about what these two lines mean. It’s best to go with the obvious phallic image. It’s about a root vegetable. Slow-growing but huge. For a more academic discussion see “Vegetable Love”: Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” Herrick’s “The Vine,” and the Attraction of Plants”

The poet continues to describe how, in this ideal world, he would spend

Two hundred to adore each breast, 
But thirty thousand to the rest; 

The tone of this first stanza is set by the rhythm of the lines. It’s relaxed, laid-back, plenty of time

We would sit down, and think which way 
To walk, and pass our long love’s day. 

I would 
Love you ten years before the flood, 
And you should, if you please, refuse 
Till the conversion of the Jews. 

Notice the slow rhythms of the repeated “s” sounds and these final lines are a sharp contrast with the intense and urgent rhythms in the first four lines in the second stanza.

The second stanza begins with what I think are two of the most stunning images in English poetry, a reference to the sun god Apollo, whose chariot dragged the sun across the sky.

 But at my back I always hear 
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; 
And yonder all before us lie 
Deserts of vast eternity. 

It is in the juxtaposition of these two images that the poem has such great effect. The idea of Time’s wingèd chariot

and a helpless human being confronted by Deserts of vast eternity is brilliant. It sets in contrast the concerns of the young man with the immediacy of his desire for his lover and the hopelessness of eternity.

Remember that this poem was written in Puritan Christian 17th century England. It is impossible to argue that this isn’t an atheistic view of eternity. There is no talk of redemption. It’s a bleak vision.

The poet then shifts the focus from the broad perspective to the very personal:

Thy beauty shall no more be found; 
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound 
My echoing song; then worms shall try 
That long-preserved virginity, 
And your quaint honour turn to dust, 
And into ashes all my lust; 

There will be no echo of her beauty nor his song in the marble vault and in an intensely shocking image, the poets says that worms will devour her flesh and her quaint (meaning beautiful) honour and his lust will turn to dust and ashes.

The stanza concludes with a sobering thought

The grave’s a fine and private place, 
But none, I think, do there embrace. 

The word fine has two meanings. The first is the obvious modern one which is profoundly ironic in this context and the other is”precise or exact” as in “he made a fine point.” In these two final lines, the poet is saying that death is final, there is nothing else, there is no afterlife, lovers are not reunited.

Having laid out the two opposing arguments to his coy mistress, the poet concludes in the third stanza, that we better get on with it because we’re pretty soon going to be dead and

And while thy willing soul transpires 
At every pore with instant fires, 
Now let us sport us while we may, 

Which in modern parlance would read ” I know you’re hot for it.”

The next image combines one of birds of prey and the idea of time devouring the lovers and reverses it suggesting that the lovers should devour time.

 languish in his slow-chapped power.

Where chapped means chewed. It is an echo of the idea in the second stanza of the worms devouring the mistress.

The final image is one of a ball. I have always seen it an image of a cannonball fired at the gates of life with the obvious sexual connotations of the firing of a cannonball being an explosive act of rough strife.

The poet is saying that it is in sex and sexual pleasure that they will transcend the limitations of their lives.

though we cannot make our sun 
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

The third stanza closes with an image of the winged chariot.

The lovers must seize the day.

Had we but world enough and time, 
This coyness, lady, were no crime. 
We would sit down, and think which way 
To walk, and pass our long love’s day. 
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side 
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide 
Of Humber would complain. I would 
Love you ten years before the flood, 
And you should, if you please, refuse 
Till the conversion of the Jews. 
My vegetable love should grow 
Vaster than empires and more slow; 
An hundred years should go to praise 
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; 
Two hundred to adore each breast, 
But thirty thousand to the rest; 
An age at least to every part, 
And the last age should show your heart. 
For, lady, you deserve this state, 
Nor would I love at lower rate. 
       But at my back I always hear 
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; 
And yonder all before us lie 
Deserts of vast eternity. 
Thy beauty shall no more be found; 
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound 
My echoing song; then worms shall try 
That long-preserved virginity, 
And your quaint honour turn to dust, 
And into ashes all my lust; 
The grave’s a fine and private place, 
But none, I think, do there embrace. 
       Now therefore, while the youthful hue 
Sits on thy skin like morning dew, 
And while thy willing soul transpires 
At every pore with instant fires, 
Now let us sport us while we may, 
And now, like amorous birds of prey, 
Rather at once our time devour 
Than languish in his slow-chapped power. 
Let us roll all our strength and all 
Our sweetness up into one ball, 
And tear our pleasures with rough strife 
Through the iron gates of life: 
Thus, though we cannot make our sun 
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Emily Dickinson’s Metaphysical Poetry: Because I could not stop for Death

First some definitions.

Helen Gardner noted the dramatic quality of (Metaphysical) poetry as a personal address of argument and persuasion. It can address a physical lover, to God, to Christ’s mother Mary, or to a congregation of believers. Gardner, Helen (1957). Metaphysical Poets. Oxford University Press, London. p22-24)

Metaphysical poetry is characterised by what is known as the conceit. 

The metaphysical conceit, associated with the Metaphysical poets of the 17th century, is an  intricate and intellectual device. It sets up an analogy between one entity’s spiritual qualities and an object in the physical world and this controls the whole structure of the poem.

By these definitions, Dickinson’s beautiful Because I could not stop for Death qualifies as a metaphysical poem as much as Donne’s A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning or Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress 

The central conceit or metaphor of the poem is the idea of a friend stopping to offer someone a ride in a carriage. This image is beautifully captured in the final scene of the film A Quiet Passion were the poem is read during Dickinson’s funeral procession.

Because I could not stop for Death —
He kindly stopped for me —
The Carriage held but just Ourselves —
And Immortality.

We slowly drove — He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility —

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess — in the Ring —
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain —
We passed the Setting Sun —

Or rather — He passed Us —
The Dews drew quivering and Chill —
For only Gossamer, my Gown —
My Tippet — only Tulle —

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground —
The Roof was scarcely visible —
The Cornice — in the Ground —

Since then — ’tis Centuries — and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity —

The central image of the of a friend offering a ride is expanded through the poem. The friend is Death and his offer is “kindly”.  There is a sense of acceptance and ” civility” that suffuses the poem coupled with a sense of unhurried preparedness.

And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility —

In the next stanza, the carriage passes “the School, where Children strove”, the Fields of Gazing Grain”, “the Setting Sun”. It is almost as if Dickinson watches her life passing away in a few fleeting and poignant images.

Finally, her journey ends at her grave

a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground —
The Roof was scarcely visible —
The Cornice — in the Ground

The final stanza, is a voice from Eternity which is proving

shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity

Is this an echo of Marvell’s

But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.

Dickinson’s image contains none of the urgency of Marvell’s and the two poems have quite different concerns.  However, the central conceit, of the horses drawing the chariot or the carriage towards eternity is the same.

More reading

Emily Dickinson and Metaphysical Poetry

A Quiet Passion and The Importance of being Emily

Director Terence Davies’ brilliant portrayal of Emily Dickinson is an immensely important film. It will shape the perceptions of Dickinson’s life for every undergraduate reader of her poetry from now on.

The film is all the more brilliant because it is the story of a young woman who leaves  represses school, returns to the family home where she lives and writes poetry for the rest of her life. And that’s the plot.

The rest of the film is held together by two incredible actors Cynthia Nixon and Jennifer Ehle.  But predominantly by an absolutely outstanding performance by Nixon.

For the most part, it’s a reflective and contemplative film, a film about a poet whose ill-health and disillusionment increasingly isolated to from the world and all around her.

The first half of the film, which features Emily’s friendship with Vryling Wilder Buffum (Catherine Bailey) sparkles with Wildean wit.

The two discuss marriage often, not as a romantic option but as a practical one. The friendship ends, as it must, when Vryling marries and moves away. There is a poignant little scene in the church when Vryling walks down the aisle with her new husband and turns to Emily and says, “No tears, Emily.”

There are some marvellous exchanges between Emily and her brother and sister on one hand and her aunt Elizabeth Dickinson Currier (Annette Badland) which could have come straight out of Oscar Wilde.

But the mood darkens in the second half of the film. People for whom Emily has and deep emotional attachment, including the married Reverend Charles Wadsworth, move away and Emily’s parents both die.  Some, but not much, of her poetry is begrudgingly published by male editors.

Emily dresses in white and increasingly rejects all contact from potential suitors and even editors.

Dickinson reads her poetry throughout the film. The final poem is the beautiful Because I could not stop for Death which is read as Dickenson’s funeral  cortege takes her to the graveyard.

Because I could not stop for Death —
He kindly stopped for me —
The Carriage held but just Ourselves —
And Immortality.

We slowly drove — He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility —

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess — in the Ring —
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain —
We passed the Setting Sun —

Or rather — He passed Us —
The Dews drew quivering and Chill —
For only Gossamer, my Gown —
My Tippet — only Tulle —

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground —
The Roof was scarcely visible —
The Cornice — in the Ground —

Since then — ’tis Centuries — and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity —

 

 

 

How poetry works: two love poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an openly bisexual American poet and playwright who received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923 and was the third woman to win the award for poetry. She was also known for her feminist activism.

It was said she wrote some of the best sonnets of the century.

These are two of them.

I, Being Born a Woman, and Distressed

I, being born a woman, and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body’s weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, this poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity — let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.

The Sonnet is a 14 line poem and has been popular with poets for more than 500 years. Shakespeare wrote 152 of them. They come in slightly different forms. This first one comes in two parts: an octave (the first eight lines) followed by a sestet (the last six lines). It’s held together by the rhyme structure. (abbabba dedede).

The two parts of the poem deal with two different, but related, ideas. The structure of the ideas and the song is reflected by the rhyme structure

The poem is addressed to a lover to whom the poet says that because she is a woman making love leaves her “distressed”. The very presence of her lover and his “weight upon my breast” makes it easy for her to understand her sexual frenzy and to disregard her intellectual response, leaving her “undone, possessed”. This section of the poem is about poet’s disconnect between her mind and her body.

The second section of the poem, the sestet, introduces a new idea, the idea that this sexual frenzy is a “poor treason”. The poet says her lover should not to be deceived by this poor treason: “Think not…. I shall remember you with love.”

It is usual, in a sonnet, for the last two lines to be the killer lines. This one is no exception.  The poet’s scorn is withering, let me make it plain, she says,

I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.

In effect, she is saying to her lover that the frenzy of sexual pleasure is really not worth talking about.

So, it’s not really a love poem, it’s almost an anti-love poem. The poet writes about love and sex from a perspective that would have been quite revolutionary (and shocking) in the 1920s and this is probably one of the reasons why Millay was regarded as one of the great feminist writers of the early 20th century.

The second sonnet is different in form, tone and content. With sonnets, it always helps to start by looking at the rhyme scheme. It gives you a clue to the way the the poet has constructed the poem.

In this case, the rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, efef, gg.  This is the form that Shakespeare used most frequently, three sets of four lines or quatrains and then a concluding couplet. In this case, you can expect three ideas and some kind of killer idea at the end.

Love Is Not All

Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
and rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
pinned down by need and moaning for release
or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would.

In the first four lines, the poet begins by defining love by what it isn’t. In particular, it isn’t enough to keep you alive, to keep you afloat when you’re sinking. In the next four lines, the poet turns that idea around saying “many a man is making friends with death
..for lack of love”.  The paradox is that while love is not enough to keep you alive, lack of it may kill you.

In the next quatrain, the poet reflects on her own condition and how that  “pinned down by need”  or some other dire extremity she might  “sell your love for peace.”

And then, standing in contrast to the whole poem, the final beautifully lyrical line. Notice the beautifully timed pause in the middle of the line with the full stop. It turns the whole poem round.

It may well be. I do not think I would.

It’s okay not to like William Wordsworth’s Daffodils or any of the other accepted classics for that matter

All I remember reading Daffodils (aka I wandered lonely as a cloud) when I was about 17 and thinking, “I don’t get it. It’s a poem about a guy remembering seeing some daffodils and being happy about it. So what?”

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could nay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

 Now at that age, it’s a pretty common response to a lot of poetry. And I was reasonably exceptional for my age and that I liked poetry and went on to major in English university. But Daffodils left me cold.

One of the things about poetry, is you have to read quite a lot of it to be able to understand it, so there’s a fair amount of stumbling around in the dark.  It is particularly true of Shakespeare.

Nearly 60 years, later I still haven’t changed my opinion of Daffodils.

 It’s not that I haven’t tried with Wordsworth, ( I’ve rendered The Prelude widely regarded as Wordsworth’s greatest work.)  and I have read a lot about the Romantics, the movement that Wordsworth belonged to and which included Coleridge, Keats, Shelley and Byron, none of whom really do much for me.  AlthoughOzymandias is pretty good

Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats

 The Romantic Movement which swept Europe towards the end of the 18th century was very much about art, music literature getting in touch with nature in the broadest sense so making an emotional response to daffodils was very much part of the genre. But for me this poem is purely descriptive and I don’t find it particularly satisfying.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18: The transient and immortal nature of beauty

Sonnet 18 is generally regarded as one of Shakespeare’s best and most accessible poems.

On the surface, it is a love poem but it is also a poem about the nature of  beauty, mortality and poetry.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

This sonnet opens with a question in the first line which is answered and then explained in the next six lines which focus on the transient nature of beauty.

The phrase the darling buds of May has a meaning slightly different from the way it would be interpreted today. Darling not only means dearly loved but has an older meaning of emerging to maturity and greater beauty.  This is a more likely interpretation given the next line given that the idea of the passing of time is continued with:

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date

where the transitory nature of the lease  combines with the rough winds to make beauty all the more fleeting.

Even the sun is part of the variability of nature Sometime too hot but often with his gold complexion dimmed.

In the next line there is a typical Shakespearean device where one word is given to  slightly different meanings.

And every fair from fair sometime declines

Here the first fair means beauty so that everything that is beautiful will eventually decline from that state of beauty.

In the next line, the word untrimmed is not the opposite of trimmed, where trimmed is tidy and untrimmed is untidy.  Here, trimmed means decorated, made beautiful, so untrimmed means made less beautiful or destroyed.

The final six lines of the poem contrast the eternal beauty of the subject  (and the sonnet itself) with the transient nature of natural beauty described in the first part of the poem.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st

Here the word ow’st  means own as in possess.

The  next line is a strangely biblical reference

Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.

and echoes  Psalm  23.4

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death

This quote is from the St James version of the Bible and it is highly unlikely that Shakespeare would have being familiar with this version  but he would certainly have had heard the psalm read from the great Bible that was commissioned by  Henry VIII’s Chief Minister Thomas Cromwell.

The sonnet ends with a couplet that ties up the argument of the question and response of the first 12 lines.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

This ending is typical of the sonnets with final lines often shifting meaning of the poem or sometimes even reversing it.  In the first part of the poem, the poet says

thy eternal summer shall not fade

But the final couplet qualifies this.

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Here the poet is referring to the poem, not the beauty of the subject. The immortality of the beauty only exists in poetry.  And it is ironic that 400 years after the poem was written all that survives of the physical beauty of the subject is this poem.

The gentle irony of the poem is that while the poet praises the beauty of the subject, the immortality of beauty is the immortal beauty of poetry.

Many scholars believe that this poem belongs to the “Fair Youth sequence” where the subject of the sonnets is a young man, presumably the poet’s lover.  believed to be Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton.

 

However, this poem makes no reference to a lover, male or female. The poem is dedicated to someone of great beauty and the poet immortalises that beauty in his poetry.

 

 

Shelley’s “Ozymandias”

This is perhaps Shelley’s best-known and best-loved poem. It’s written in sonnet form and as is usual in this form it, contains two fundamental ideas. The first is the pride of the tyrant in his achievements and the second is the mutability of such achievements. It’s timeless appeal is in the way it sets the achievements of mortals in context of eternity.

Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote Ozymandias when he was 25

Shelleys’ original version of Ozymandias

The poem begins with the poet recounting what he’s been told by a traveller. Why Shelley uses this device is not clear perhaps it lends an extra sense of distance between the reader and the scene that is being described but surely that could have just as easily started off “I was a traveller… And saw…”

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The brilliance of this poem lies in the simplicity and clarity with which it communicates a profoundly serious idea, that we are nothing against the ravages of time.

The first six lines are purely descriptive of the scene in the desert where the remains of the statue of Ozymandias lie the desert. The words of the poem are as desolate as scene it describes:

Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies

The scene is described not in terms of the erosion of time, but rather we have a statue that has been shattered by some act of violence that has left only the legs and the head of the statue.

The poet then shifts attention to the “shattered visage” where the expressions that the sculptor captured still visible to the viewer.

Then the middle of the poem we have a line that has troubled most commentators:

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed

Most of the commentary agrees that this probably refers to the hand and heart of the sculptor but beyond that there is little agreement. It is possible to interpret the lines as saying that the sculptor has mocked his subject by portraying the “sneer of cold command”. But this introduces a line of interpretation that is out of keeping with the narrative direction of the poem which is about the transience of the achievements of even the greatest of us. The poem is not about the way an artist interprets their subject. So these lines remain a mystery.

Then comes the part of the poem that is called the Volta where the poem changes direction. The poem changes from being a description of the scene to providing the commentary that the subject must have dictated to the sculptor.

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Perhaps two of the best-known lines in English poetry. And rightly so what marvellously content dramatic irony.

Then the poet adds the final commentary from the Traveler

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The final lines of the poem echo the lines from Marvell’s Coy Mistress

And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.

Andrew Marvell

If the statue has been despoiled by the hand of man, the relentless wear of the sands of time will soon reduce it to the level nothingness of the desert.

How poetry works: Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73

Many rank this as Shakespeare’s most famous sonnet. It is certainly a masterpiece of imagery and sentiment as well as demonstrating Shakespeare’s complete mastery of the Sonnet form. Here it is in the original as published in quarto format by Thomas Thorpe in 1609, no doubt without the author’s permission. This was private writing not meant for public consumption.

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.

This is the English sonnet, as distinct from the Italian (or Petrarchan) Sonnet or the Spenserian Sonnet. The English sonnet has the simplest form consisting of 3 quatrains (sets of four lines) of alternating rhyme and a couplet (two lines) at the end. Sonnet 73 is a brilliant example of the way Shakespeare exploits this form and uses it to tie the imagery and the meaning of the poem together.

In the first quatrain

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.

Shakespeare uses six separate metaphors in this first quatrain. The first is the idea of the yellow leaves hanging on the trees.

This is linked to the idea of the flesh hanging to the limbs of the ageing poet.

In passing, it is worth commenting on the sheer brilliance of the second line of this sonnet and the way that Shakespeare describes the yellow leaves. Having introduced the idea of the yellow leaves hanging on the bough, he turns the image around with a simple phrase “one none” and then qualifies that again with “or few” and then links that phrase with an internal rhyme to “do hang”. The rhythm of the final six monosyllabic words captures the barren and ruined nature of the bough and the poet with absolute brilliance.

The second two metaphors that Shakespeare uses are the least explicit. The first is the underlying metaphor of the poet’s ageing body. Shakespeare links the idea of ageing to third and fourth metaphors: that of the tree where “yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang” and that of the ruins of the church “Bare ruined choirs”. These metaphors are linked through the idea of the boughs and the poet’s limbs shaking against the cold.

Sweet birds have sung in the boughs of the trees, the sweet birds or choristers sung in the church and the the sweet birds of passion have sung in the poet’s limbs.

J. M. W. Turner, The Chancel and Crossing of Tintern Abbey, Looking Towards the East Window, 1794

Bare ruined choirs

In the second quatrain, Shakespeare links the ideas of ruin and decay in nature with the ideas of the death and sleep, which is “Death’s second self”.

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

The idea of the similarity between death and sleep is a common one in Shakespeare:

Hamlet: To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to

Hamlet (Act 3, Scene1 64-67)

Macbeth: the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life

Macbeth (Act 2, Scene 2, 47-49)

Prospero: We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep

The Tempest (Act 4, Scene 1, 156–158)

The image of approaching night and death is embedded in

the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west

The image of twilight and the sunset is a visual link to the yellow and red colours of fading leaves and in the final quatrain this is linked to the idea of fire.

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 by.

The final quatrains by far the most difficult. The book tells his lover that the glow of twilight is like the glowing embers of the fire of his life. Now he lies on “the ashes of his youth” as if he were on his deathbed. His passion for life has consumed him just as it has nourished him.

The Sonnet ends as sonnets must, with a couplet:

This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

The technique that Shakespeare uses here is called a volta or turn and is common to most sonnets. The volta constitutes the point at which the poet turns the meaning, the tone or the imagery of the poem in a different direction. Here the poet stops describing his own situation and turns again to address his young lover to whom the poem is dedicated. It also links to the very first line in the poem which is also addressed to the younger lover:

“thou mayst in me behold”

The brilliance of this particular poem rests in the dazzling visual imagery that runs throughout. The complex image of the poet’s body, the leaves on the tree and the choir of the church in the first quatrain must rank as one of the most brilliant in English literature. This initial image of the autumn leaves is then linked to the images of sunset and fire and the death of passion.

The true greatness of this poem lies in combining its brilliantly detailed imagery with the great themes of love and death. A true masterpiece.