Shakespeare: That time of year

"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 ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st 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 the rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long."

-William Shakespeare


This sonnet - Shakespeare's 73rd of 154, by some count - is structured very differently from the sonnets of his that we have seen thus far.  Like his other sonnets, it includes the ababcdcdefefgg rhyme scheme, but it lacks a turn or answer at line 9, which many of his other sonnets include.  Rather than present a question in the first 8 lines which is then answered in the following 4 or 6, 'That time of year' expresses a predicament in the first 12 lines and uses the couplet to explain why the situation is significant.

The first quatrain introduces the speaker, who we can see is a dying man or woman speaking to their loved one, who we can assume is the speakers' spouse.  For ease of explanation, lack of evidence to the contrary, and the fact that Shakespeare is male, I'm going to assume that the speaker is male and he is speaking to his wife.  He begins by telling his wife that she has witnessed him wither away over some time, and compares it to the closing of a year, when the leaves fall from the trees.  This is a very effective way to present the situation, as it gives a direct comparison in time with the ending of a year, and it gives imagery of a bare tree to compare to the speaker.

The following quatrain also gives a comparison involving time, though this time to the end of a day.  It includes imagery in the fading of the sun into blackness.  It's also worth mentioning that this quatrain specifically mentions Death.  This section of the poem might be paraphrased as, "You see the light fade out of me and death takes my life.

The final quatrain compares the speaker to a dying fire, and is arguably the most dense. It states that the fire burns on the ashes of its youth and analogizes the speaker's deathbed to those ashes.  I am conflicted about what the following line (Consumed with that which it was nourished by) means.  I might assume that this alludes to the speaker's increased dependence on forms of nourishment - both real and more abstract - to stay alive.  Those forms of nourishment are consuming the speaker.

The couplet closes the poem by stating that the decreased time that the subject might love the speaker makes her love more intense.  This is a very common theme; everything is made more valuable when it is finite.  Love is no exception, and Shakespeare states this eloquently.

I am extremely fond of this sonnet.  It breaks from usual sonnet structure, as it presents a problem that doesn't necessarily have a solution.  This is reflected in large degree in the theme.  The death of a loved one is a very serious problem, and it certainly doesn't have a 'solution' in the regular sense of the word.  Shakespeare uses this odd structure to his advantage and has produced something very unique as a result, even among all of his fantastic works.