g considered. If the poet was fifty
years of age or more, the terms here discussed are amply and fully
satisfied without ascribing to them any definite indication as to the
age of the person addressed. To a person of the age of fifty or sixty
years, addressing a person young enough to be his son, especially if
of a fair and youthful appearance, the expressions "boy" or "youth"
come quite naturally and have no necessary significance beyond
indicating the _relative_ age of the person so addressed.[15] And
especially is this so when the words are used in expressions of
affection and of familiar or caressing endearment.

With such aid as may be had from considering the age of his friend, we
come to the more important inquiry: WHAT WAS THE AGE OF THE AUTHOR
OF THESE SONNETS,--WHAT WAS THE AGE OF THE POET OF THE SHAKESPEAREAN
PLAYS? I shall present that which indicates that HE WAS PROBABLY
FIFTY, PERHAPS SIXTY, CERTAINLY MORE THAN FORTY YEARS OF AGE at the time
he wrote the Sonnets.

But if our great poet was forty,--probably if he was thirty-five years
of age, when these Sonnets were composed,--he was born before 1564,
before the birth date of William Shakespeare.

* * * * *

The poet clearly indicates that he is older than his friend. In Sonnet
XXII. he says:

_My glass shall not persuade me I am old_,
So long as _youth and thou_ are of one date;
But when in thee time's furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.
For all that beauty that doth cover thee
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:
How can I then be _elder_ than thou art?

In Sonnet LXXIII. he speaks directly of his own age or period of life,
as follows:

That _time of year_ thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In _me_ thou seest the _twilight_ of such day
As _after sunset_ fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me _thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie_,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To _love that well which thou must leave ere long_.

The latter