Monday, November 25, 2013

That time of year

A very famous sonnet on this very dark day  J
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LXXIII

  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 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 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,
  Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
    This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
    To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.
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I won’t write ad nauseam (but only because too many people have already done that).  I’ll just repeat this much:  In this one, Shakespeare’s standard three-metaphor structure for sonnets is “zooming in” in three steps, moving from a time of year in the first quatrain to a time of day in the second to a fire in the third, and that’s the extra part (on top of the perfection of form, of course).  The volta is the more in line 13.

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