Critical Analysis
Sonnet 12 represents the first time in which the speaker's first person pronoun, "I", dominates the poem, indicating the beginning of his voice's ascendancy in the unfolding drama of the sequence. Helen Vendler proposes the poem holds two models of time: one of gradual decay, and one of an aggressive emblem-figure of Time with his scythe. These ideas call up two approaches of Death: one sad and innocent in which everything slowly wastes away, growing barren and aged, and one in which the reaper actively cuts them down and takes them away as if life had been murdered.
As Vendler notes, the first 12 lines of the poem are associated with the innocent death of decay with time. Carl Atkins adds to this, describing how much of the imagery used is transmuted from lively, growing identities to macabre indifference, such as "the harvest-home .. into a funeral, and the wagon laden with ripened corn becomes a bier bearing the aged dead". These lines bring Time's aging decay into the spotlight as a natural and inexorable force in the world.
The crux of Vendler's analysis comes out of the phrase 'Sweets and Beauties' in line 11. She notes that the word "Beauties" is clearly a reference back to the earlier lines containing aesthetic beauties that wither away with time, and that "Sweets" has a deeper, moral context. She holds that Beauties are outward show and Sweets are inward virtues, and that both fade with the passage of time. An example of one of the 'beauties' with a virtuous provision can be found on line 6 in the 'virtuous generosity of the canopy sheltering the herd'. In Vendler's interpretation, the act of the canopy providing the herd with shelter from the elements is given freely, without expectation or need of anything in return. Such an act is classified as generosity and so is virtuous by nature. Atkins agrees, also noting that the "Sweet" favor of the canopy will share the same fate as the beauties, fading with time as the leaves disappear. Michael Schoenfeldt's scholarly synopsis of the sonnet focuses on Vendler's analysis of the anthropomorphizing of the autumnal mortality, in particular the use of stark, particular words (barren, bier, beard) to replace, with anthropomorphic emphasis, more common descriptors (shed, corn, gathered, wagon, awn). He views these careful linguistic choices to be essential in understanding the grim theme underlying beauty's demise.
In the latter portion of her analysis, Vendler proposes a third, voluntary approach to death. All the natural images used in the poem point to including death as part of the cycle of life and imply that some things must embrace death willingly to allow for new growth to flourish . The speaker goes on to associate breeding and procreation with a new supply of budding virtue in the final lines of the poem. This surrender of beauty and the proliferation of virtue is implied as the way to triumph over Time and Death, and is the primary message from the speaker.
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