Read the following poem carefully before choosing your answer.
Sonnet 73
[1] That time of year thou mayst in me behold
[2] When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
[3] Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
[4] Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
[5] In me thou seest the twilight of such day
[6] As after sunset fadeth in the west,
[7] Which by and by black night doth take away,
[8] Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
[9] In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
[10] That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
[11] As the death-bed whereon it must expire
[12] Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
[13] This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
[14] To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
How does the structural division between the three quatrains (lines 1–12) and the concluding couplet (lines 13–14) function to develop the poem's theme?
- AThe quatrains detail the poet's biographical anxiety regarding his own aging, while the couplet resolves this anxiety by expressing a decision to retire from public writing.
- BThe quatrains maintain a uniform tone of despair regarding decay, which is sustained without variation through the couplet to emphasize the utter hopelessness of mortality.
- CThe quatrains chronologically recount a series of events in which the speaker walks through autumn woods, observes the sunset, and sits by a dying fire, culminating in a couplet where the speaker meets a companion.
- The quatrains present three distinct analogies illustrating the speaker's decline, while the final couplet shifts to reveal how this mortality intensifies the addressee's love.Answer
- EThe quatrains employ enjambment to break the formal rhyme scheme and create a sense of chaotic disintegration, which is resolved only when the couplet returns the poem to a regular meter.