All About Books discussion

I'm posting this a little early, so I don't forget. From The Top 500 Poems

Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayest 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 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 sees 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 nourished by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

The editor's notes in the anthology:
It is as though the measured pace of poetry implicitly says, “The clock is ticking, the meter is running. Music and poetry are themselves reminders of time, and time’s passing leads finally to a state of inexorable mortality, ever clearer as one ages. But, as Wallace Stevens was to say in “Sunday Morning,” dozens of decades later, “Death is the mother of beauty:" the meter matrix of mortality gives birth to much great poetry.

I found a helpful analysis of the poem here.

Thanks for posting Beth. I haven't read a William Shakespeare sonnet in years.

Grat Poem, great Poet ...

On the subject of autumn, John Keats's "To Autumn" was an earlier Monday Poem:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Also a great poem.

The poem is beautiful - a classic in every sense of the word.

I love the image of the glowing coals, feeding on the last remnants of what is to burn .. and the more beautiful for it .. the more precious too.

Thanks Beth - the rhythm seems to carry me beyond this time & place.
I wonder if his sonnets translate well into other languages.