Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;
From hence your memory death cannot take,
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie.
Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read,
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse
When all the breathers of this world are dead;
You still shall live–such virtue hath my pen–
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.
This and sonnets 49, 63 and 77 belong to a goup of ‘climacteric sonnets’, all of them significant in that they look forward mentally to a time when the love between poet and youth will have altered perhaps beyond recognition, and either one or the other will no longer be present to record the history of their commitment to each other. All will have come to an end. The sonnet therefore interrupts the rival poet(s) sequence, but to numerologists and those interested in fateful numbers and dates, the number 81, being nine squared, is far too important to miss.
It is worthy of note also that this sonnet countermands the superiority of the supposed rival with its confident claim that it will survive beyond the present age and speak aloud to ages yet unborn. Despite his humility the poet claims immortality for his verse, and eyes yet not created shall read and admire it. We as readers cannot fail to be conscious of the fact that we are the ‘eyes not yet created’ and the ‘tongues to be’, and the consciousness of this knowledge adds a further eerie dimension to our understanding of the poem.
Equally worthy of note is that none of the commentators regard this sonnet as having any numerological significance. SB perhaps considers such matters as beneath notice; GBE notes that it interrupts the ‘rival poet(s)’ sequence, and that its confident tone associates it with 18 (the reverse of 81, although he does not mention this); KDJ remarks that it is one after 80 or four score, a figure associated with extreme old age (she does mention the climacteric numbers in her introduction); JK passes by on the other side as it were; and HV concerns herself strictly with verbal echoes and parallellisms.
However I reproduce below part of the OED entry for ‘climacteric’ and ‘climacterical’, the latter at least giving an entry for 1590. The subject was throughout the period of considerable concern. The fact that Elizabeth survived her grand climacteric (her 63rd year, 1596) was a matter of some import. The ‘sad augurs’ must have thought it most unlikely that she would survive, but in the end had to ‘mock their own presage’. They had already predicted dire calamity for 1588, a year which was exactly seventy years after Martin Luther had defied the Pope, an event which marked the end of a cycle of human affairs. And seventy years was exactly the span of the Babylonian Captivity (See Daniel and Revelations). The concern with precise numerical factors, hidden meanings, and fateful dates was widespread. Climacteric dates were based largely on the mysterious numbers 7, 9 and 11.
The point here is however that the sonnet is placed deliberately at this juncture, halting the rival poet sequence, and in a sense overturning that sequence. It is done deliberately so, of that there can be no doubt, for the other critical numbers are similarly observed. We cannot ascribe to mere chance the choosing of subject matter for 12 & 60; 49, 63, 77, & 81; and, to a lesser extent, 37, 38, 52, 76, 104,126 and 154. They all seem to have been set there with deliberate purpose, even though, through the dark backward and abysm of time, we can no longer discern exactly what that purpose was. But mere chance would not have placed such sonnets at such points, and they no doubt hold the key to some lock, of which unfortunately both lock and key have long since been thrown away.
The OED entry for climacteric:
B. n.
1. A critical stage in human life; a point at which the person was supposed to be specially liable to change in health or fortune. According to some, all the years denoted by multiples of 7 (7, 14, 21, etc.) were climacterics: others admitted only the odd multiples of 7 (7, 21, 35, etc.); some included also the multiples of 9. grand (†great) climacteric (sometimes simply the climacteric): the 63rd year of life (63 = 7 × 9), supposed to be specially critical. (According to some, the 81st year (81 = 9 × 9) was also a grand climacteric.) The phrase appears to have been taken immediately from Spanish.
1634 Sir T. Herbert Trav. 158 This false Prophet (sore against his will) died in his sixtie third yeare (his great Clymatericke). c1645 Howell Lett. I. iii. xi, It is a common+custom amongst the Spaniard, when he hath pass’d his gran climacteric+to make a voluntary resignation of offices. 1697 Dryden Virgil Ded., I began this Work in my great Climacterique. 1712 Addison Spect. No. 295 31, I am turned of my great Climacteric. 1728 Morgan Algiers II. iv. 293 He lived to see one of those critical and reputed dangerous Periods of Human Life, Called the Gran Climacterics, dying in his sixty third Year. 1742 Fielding Jos. Andrews iv. vii, When they arrive at this period [15 yrs.], and have now passed their second climateric. 1823 Byron Juan x. xlvii, Her climacteric teased her like her teens.
Also, ‘climacterical’
1. = climacteric A. 1; esp. applied to the ‘grand climacteric’ or 63rd year of life; see prec. B. 1.
1590 L. Lloyd Dial Daies Oct. 25 Georgius Castriotus+died upon this day in his climatericall year 63. 1602 W. Vaughan Nat. Direct. 47 These they name climacterical or stayrie yeares, for then they saw great alterations. Now, a climactericall yeare is euery seauenth yeare. 1609 C. Butler Fem. Mon. ii. (1623) Eij, This Climactericall number of nine times seven. 1611 Cotgr., L’an climactère, the climatericall yeare. 1693 W. Freke Sel. Ess. iv. 23 Who but one that has more Fancy than Judgment would mind the Climacterical Years? 1839 De Quincey Wordsworth in Tait’s Mag. 10/1 An elderly man, who confessed to having passed the grand climacterical year (9 multiplied into 7) of 63.
For those interested in vocabulary usage, it is noticeable that the use of the word ‘shall’ in this sonnet is extreme, underlining the fact that it is a sonnet that looks to the future, both to death, and to immortality, the absence of death. The word occurs seven times here, and only sixty times in the sonnets as a whole, a rate of use that would lead us to expect the word about once in every three sonnets. It therefore exceeds the average rate of use here by a factor of about twenty.
The other most noticeable vocabulary feature is the interplay between ‘I’ and ‘you’, the words or their close relatives occuring almost alternately, with the juxtaposition in some lines of ‘the world at large’, ‘other eyes’, ‘other tongues’. Thus the sequence runs – I, you, your, me, your, I, me, you, your, others, others, your, others, you, my, others – the whole giving a pleasing sense of symmetry.
Another sequence which strikes the eye of the mind is the alternation between life and death and their respective trappings . This sequence gives – live, Epitaph, survive, rotten, memory, death, take, forgotten, life, gone, die, grave, entombed, lie, monument, created, to be, being, breathers, dead, live, virtue (= life force), breath, breathes. Only towards the end do the life-enhancing words begin to predominate. I do not believe for a moment that any poem is ever constructed solely on the principle of observing such patterns, but the unconscious mind probably helps to shape the underlying thought, and brings into play all the disparate elements. The poet only begins after the event to realise what a wonderfully dense and complex structure has been created.
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