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Sonnet 73
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 seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth steal away,
Death's second self, which seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed 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.

Question to begin: Without getting into too much detail, what is this poem roughly about?

This is a good start. All I was aiming for is "it's about death," but you've brought up good points. The trick is to turn any point you think might be contentious into a question.

For example, just ask: "What season is this we're in?" "What are the images he's using exactly and how do they relate?" (That second question ends up splitting up the poem in 4 parts, three stanzas each with an image and the final couplet).

We're not quite in Autumn, I don't think, not in this poem.

Again - this is really good, you did the exact right thing. And you're right, Autumn's involved here, but as you've implied, it's Autumn just about to turn Winter -- I'm not saying that to be nitpicky, but rather to make clear that summer's got nothing to do with this poem.

The timing is really the key to this whole poem. Take note of "none, or few" - it should be "few, or none," but the inversion is there like as if the speaker is stopping himself: he skipped to "none" too soon. He became aware of his own mortality too soon.

You can set up the other stanzas just by seeing exactly what's going on in the first stanza. There's an internal speaker, saying to some other dude that he (the other dude) is sensitive to the fact the speaker is confronting death in everything he does. In this first stanza, he has a time of year within him (Autumn approaching Winter), and it makes him think of an image, of a tree with few leaves where birds used to sing.

What is the image in the second stanza (the next four lines)? You can render that in plain old English, I think that's a good idea.

Excellent! You're getting the hang of this already. "The image of death is stealing into it" is the key here - death has the agency, not the light.

OK - so let's sum up so far.

In the first stanza, we had the speaker thinking of himself as a tree, but a tree is affected really badly by the time of year within the speaker. Being a tree isn't about being a giant dead hunk in the middle of the ground. It's about being at rest, being beautiful, and able to provide for many to express themselves (birds singing). "Being at rest" and yet able to provide hints strongly that what our speaker is thinking about in the first stanza is his intellectual legacy. Trouble is, his intellectual legacy depends on him being there for others - he's not going to be there any more.

This second stanza, on the other hand, is the literal image of twilight fading out slowly. Again, light = intellect, but the key is that he's given up on a legacy. It just looks like, in those first two lines of this stanza, that he wants to go with grace. That's not being allowed him, though. Death is creeping up on him and eating him up; it is affecting his thought more than he would like.

So with that in mind, the third stanza somehow resolves the problem of finding the right image, of finding why exactly the audience loves the speaker and where the speaker can take pride in himself.

It's just being familiar with some literature. After reading about 10 poems in this way, certain things repeat - light is always clarity or knowledge, Autumn is the time one reflects before death, blah blah. It's really a learned skill.

But anyway, how the third stanza about the "fire" resolves the question of death in the speaker's mind is my concern now.

If you need my full commentary on this poem and the method for going through it, use this.

What's happened the first and second stanzas is that the speaker has tried to reconcile himself to death through images. The images speak to the "intellect," i.e. the soul after the body dies. But the intellect fails both times, first to provide anything good for others, second in terms of keeping him sane while he approaches death.

The fire image is probably NOT intellectual. It's spirit, pure and simple, I think. He used up his youth well, and in using up his youth well "burnt himself out," so to speak. He's dying because he was so great a fire.

This last image is what appeals to the internal audience of the poem. One has to wonder about that audience's conception of love, and whether it is a good one or not.