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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