It’s going to happen one day, as the focus on time in previous stanzas has proven. In the first four lines of ‘Sonnet 71,’ the speaker begins by telling the Fair Youth what he should do after the speaker dies. For example, the transitions between all the lines of the first quatrain and lines five and six.įrom this vile world with vildest worms to dwell: One has to move forward in order to comfortably resolve a phrase or sentence. Enjambment forces a reader down to the next line, and the next, quickly.
It occurs when a line is cut off before its natural stopping point. For example, the image of the speaker’s corpse leaving the “vile” living world and entering into one that is newly vile with “worms”.Īnother important technique commonly used in poetry is enjambment. It is something one can sense with their five senses. Traditionally, the word “image” is related to visual sights, things that a reader can imagine seeing, but imagery is much more than that. Imagery refers to the elements of a poem that engage a reader’s senses. For example, “world” and “worms” in line four and “wise world” in line thirteen. The first of these, alliteration, occurs when words are used in succession, or at least appear close together, and begin with the same sound. These include but are not limited to alliteration, imagery, and enjambment. Shakespeare makes use of several poetic techniques in ‘Sonnet 71’. This turn, as in Petrarchan sonnets, sometimes appears between the first eight lines and the second six. They’re sometimes used to answer a question posed in the previous twelve lines, shift the perspective, or even change speakers. They often bring with them a turn or “ volta” (in Italian) in the poem. This is a feature that is common to all of Shakespeare’s poems. The last two lines (known as a couplet) are a rhyming pair. The first is unstressed and the second stressed. Iambic pentameter means that each line contains five sets of two beats, known as metrical feet. The poem follows a consistent rhyme scheme that conforms to the pattern of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG and it is written in iambic pentameter. The English or Shakespearean sonnet (sometimes also known as the Elizabethan) is made up of three quatrains, or sets of four lines, and one concluding couplet, or set of two rhyming lines. It is also structured in a form that has become synonymous with the poet’s name. ‘Sonnet 71’ by William Shakespeare is a single stanza poem that contains fourteen lines the traditional number for a sonnet. Otherwise, people are going to be able to use that love against him. He goes on to tell the youth that it’s important for the youth to stop loving him after he’s dead too. The speaker doesn’t want the youth to feel any sorrow at all, even over his death. As soon as the bells are done ringing he should stop feeling sad. The speaker tells the youth directly that he doesn’t want the young man to spend a long time mourning him.
‘Sonnet 71’ by William Shakespeare is directed at the Fair Youth and describes what the youth should do and feel after the speaker has died. Lest the wise world should look into your moan,Īnd mock you with me after I am gone. If thinking on me then should make you woe.īut let your love even with my life decay That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, The hand that writ it, for I love you so, Than you shall hear the surly sullen bellįrom this vile world with vilest worms to dwell: These include death, afterlife, mourning, and relationships.
In ‘Sonnet 71’ Shakespeare explores themes common to his sonnets. There has been a great deal of speculation about who this young man could possibly be, but no single identity has ever been decided upon. These poems are devoted to a young, beautiful man whose identity remains unknown to this day. These start with sonnet number one and run all the way through sonnet one hundred twenty-six. It is part of the Bard’s well-known Fair Youth sequence of sonnets. ‘ Sonnet 71,’ also known as ‘No longer mourn for me when I am dead,’ is number seventy-one of one hundred fifty-four sonnets that Shakespeare wrote over his lifetime.