Is the beloved youth likely to use this (the world's opinion) as an excuse not to value or to preserve his love? In fact sonnets 49, 57 & 58 have already suggested that this has already happened, so it would be no surprise to find that death brought no change. The failure of the couplet forces us to re-examine its wider implications. Much more compelling are the reasons already advanced - I love you so, and I would not wish that memories of me might cause you pain. To abandon precious memories simply because a few cynics in the world might laugh at them would be a poor and calculating response to love. The final couplet provides the clinching reason and justification for forgetting the loved one, but its essential weakness undermines it. That love will insist that the youth is not allowed to suffer one jot of pain, and therefore he himself, the poet, must be forgotten as soon as he is gone.
It is therefore necessary to call on some other reasons to stop the woe, some other force, and this is found, where else, but in the love that the poet has for the youth. The conjuration not to mourn occurs at the beginning of the quatrain, and it is almost forgotten by the end of the four lines. In the first quatrain the tolling of the death bell, which seems to recur with each passing line, is a forceful reminder of the love which survives after death, a reminder of the love which is and was. Two forces are opposed to each other in the poem, the force of love which knows no limits and would not have the beloved suffer one least pang on account of that love, and the force of memory which deepest love instils, which seeks to remain forever, even after death.
Its primary message seems to be the depth of commitment in love that the writer experiences - it is a love which has no boundary, even to the extent of submitting itself to full and final annihilation, without even the lingering memory remaining of what he once was. The poem need not however be interpreted as an ironic or absurd portrayal of turning the tables.
It is somewhat akin to the philosophical conundrum 'Do not read this sentence!' You cannot read a poem which asks you to forget its writer, without at the same time having the memory of that writer continuously thrust into your thoughts.
Mortality therefore re-establishes itself as a prime and predominant actor in the pantomime of life.Ĭritics have noted the essential and inherent contradiction of this sonnet. It is appropriate that the group should be placed here, because, with 70 sonnets completed, the poet has figuratively reached the end of his alloted span of three score and ten years. Sonnets 71 - 4 are a group which anticipate the poet's death and speculate on the memory which might remain after him in the mind of his beloved.