Summary: This is a comparison of Shakespeare’s Sonnet # 73 and Milton Sonnet VII Analysis.

Sonnet number 73 philosophically reminds on of mortality. This sonnet is one of Shakespeare's best, despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that it may be interpreted in a number of different ways. It incorporates the feelings of love and death by stating that when the lover feels the near death-like sorrow of the poet she will learn to love the poet even more. Sonnet 73 is a perfect Shakespearean sonnet. There is a pause following each quatrain, the longest pause coming after the third. Each quatrain treats one chief, visual image-autumn, twilight, a glowing fire almost dead-all uniting to create a solemn awareness of near-death: The couplet, comments on what has gone before without the slightest suggestion of the epigrammatic which so often mars the conclusion of Shakespeare's sonnets. In Quatrain 1 Shakespeare compares himself (in a metaphor) to autumn when trees are virtually bare of leaves. In another metaphor he compares the forest of bare trees to "bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang." That is, the trees remind him of the ruined abbeys and monasteries.

The metaphors give us a minute and vivid picture of Shakespeare's desolate feelings. Quatrain 2 shows Shakespeare comparing his condition to a sunset, just as the sun has sunk, at which point black night, deaths second self. So that is how Shakespeare feels-almost on the point of death. The next quatrain contains the most difficult of the metaphors: Shakespeare compares himself to a glowing bed of coals almost on the point of dying out; the coals are lying on a bed of ashes which formerly had given great "nourishment" to the fire, but now are piled up high as dead ashes-enough to kill what few remaining living embers are left. This metaphoric statement is an analysis of the tragic condition of life, which dies the sooner the more intensely it lives.

In the couplet the three metaphors culminate as Shakespeare's friend now perceives this condition of near-death on Shakespeare's part, and, noticing Shakespeare's condition, will love Shakespeare much more knowing that the poet has not long to live. Some take line 14 in the sense that the friend should cherish the poet all the more, knowing that the friend is soon to absent himself.

Another contention of mortality is seen in Milton's poem 'How soon hath Time' which was written when he turned twenty three. He was having doubts at growing older and that doubt was portrayed in the poem. "How soon hath time," expresses anxiety over the loss of time and the spending of talents, anxiety that is believed to be more or less resolved in the socstats. The poem here unlike that of Shakespeare's is a lament on his life and profession. In "Sonnet VII," for instance, Milton questions his comparatively slow start as a poet: "How soon hath time the subtle thief of youth, / Stol’n on his wing my three and twentieth year!/ My hasting days fly on with full career,/ But my late spring no bud or blossom sheweth" (1-4).

This sense of turmoil reverberates Milton’s work either explicitly or implicitly. His turmoil, represents, to some degree a need to act. To put turmoil into repose, Milton engages study and society. Milton never exhibits in his poetry any very strong expression of his need for God's grace. He does not depict God as a Savior or Lover or Redeemer who needs to save him from his sins but rather as a "task-Master" (Sonnet VII)