THIS TIME OF YEAR IN THE BUCKET

One of  our favorite sonnets by Shakespeare  seems perfect for this time of the year and this season of our lives.

Sonnet 73: That Time of Year Thou Mayst in Me Behold
by William Shakespeare

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 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.

That was the first read through. Let us look at this sonnet more closely.
  Shakespeare makes perfect use of the  sonnet form of three  quatrains ( 4 line stanzas)  and an ending couplet (2 lines that rhyme}

 Sonnet 73: That Time of Year Thou Mayst in Me Behold

by William Shakespeare

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.

This first quatrain  explains what time of year we are  talking about. Autumn and in fact late autumn. Not the time of brilliant color as we have now in October, but more like November when most of the trees are bare of leaves  and  the song birds have retreated to warmer climes. In fact  for him the bare  revealed  tree branches become  choirs that once  were filled with song. IT  is a cold and emptied out scene.

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.

This second quatrain now describes what time of day the speaker is  seeing in himself and we are seeing. It is twilight--not sunset but after the sun has set and has faded.  Black night is almost here. So again it is the lateness of the day--just before the dark-- and the word Death is invoked for the first time- and night is seen as a harbinger of Death that will end every  life as Night ends every day "in rest."

Sonnets besides having a structure of three quatrains and a couplet also have an 8-6 split in their  14 lines.  The first eight lines should lay out and exemplify  a problem, and the last six lines should  attempt to suggest a solution or a counter argument or attitude. SO  this next section must somehow  turn  the argument around.

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.

And the third quatrain is equal to that task. Abruptly the poem sees a glow like a fire in his own  self even if he is in the late Autumn and the last daylight of his life. And what kind of a glow is it?  It is the glow of red hot coals as they turn toward ash and are at their hottest.
He insists that his present day aging self still has  burning inside even if hidden by ravages of age and time the heat of his younger passions. They have not died with time they will only expire with death.  The death bed of passion is like a hearth filled with glowing ashes. The  emotions that fired him as a youth still consume him and warm him.

And the final couplet  literally puts the cap on this argument with love and time.

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Here he turns to the imagined listener and /or reader  who has been in every part of the poem--his beloved --and you and me.

He  insists that his lover has  shared these perceptions and that this sense of something about to leave has the effect of making these last moments together even more precious and has given their love a new intensity.  Did you notice that two segments of the sonnet begins with the same three words?  --"In me thou"

This sonnet  is fiercely honest about the leaving but refuses the loss--it refuses to be diminished and in fact insists on an increase of devotion when we understand the shortness of the time we have left together.  It also  creates an astonishing transformation and unification of the lover and the beloved with those three words--IN ME THOU.  They have an unbreakable unity. Those two have become one forever.