Poem of the Day: ‘Sonnet 73’

This most famous of the one hundred fifty-four sonnets of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) evokes, as we all know, both the sweet sadness of the year’s waning and the less-sweet sadness of our own prospective decline. The poem’s fourth line — “Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang” — is, if not the outright winner, at least a strong contender for the best poetic line ever rendered in English. Sonnet 73 illustrates, as well, why this Shakespearian sonnet form, also known as the “English sonnet,” came to be identified not with its originator, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517–1547), but with Shakespeare.