"That time of year thou mayst in me behold"
I would have to say that like most other people, I enjoy reading William
Shakespear's work. He was very talented and in this poem his use of metaphors to
explain his meaning was extremely strong. The tone in the poem is based on death,
where as the theme is the ending of the human life cycle. The importance of both the tone
and theme are highly needed because both play a big role in describing what is happening
The first four lines describe images of late autumn and the falling of leaves from
trees. This lets the reader feel a sense of death. He uses a metaphor by stating, "That time
of year thou mayst in me behold" to indirectly tell the reader his age without stating it
plainly. Therefore he must be of old age, since autumn represents the coming of winter
and the coming of an end. The metaphor gives us feeling and understanding of the theme
He then goes a little deeper into death, by jumping from the length of a season,
to the passing of a single day. He describes the sunset fading in the west, and how sleep is
something second to death. He said' "Which by and by black night doth take away"
describing how night and sleep take away from our lives. Also stating, "In me thou see'st
the twilight of such day" to remind the reader about the coming of death. With night, he
describes that it seals up the rest of the day and takes it away.
The third metaphor goes even quicker, describing the few seconds when the burning ember fades away into ash. This is most definitely the best example in the poem
describing death. As the burning ember represents the last bit of life with light and
then turning into dark ash. As he quotes on line eleven, "As the deathbed whereon it must
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