Imagery in Shakespeare's Sonnet 73
...e, or few, do hang" because the normal advancing of fall is thrown of balance. The normal progression is the leaves turning color then falling off. However not all trees turn color at the same time and not all leaves fall simultaneously. Shakespeare mixes up the order of the trees maturation to force people to look at nature and how it can change. The imagery of the first quatrain gives a feeling of changing of color, a long wait and coldness. The second quatrain sees the speaker referring to another common yet effective concept. A sunset and twilight are used to describe his feelings and thoughts of the approaching end to his life. The speaker sees his life as the remaining sunlight that is rapidly being over taken by the darkness. In darkness is when people sleep and to the speaker, "sleep is deaths second self". Black night is when people sleep, sleep is a living form of death, so death is at the speakers heels as the light is being devoured. He says what you see in him is the twilight after sunset. The sunlight is a great thing much like the speaker in his younger, healthier days. Now, however, the sunlight is almost gone, but you can still see a hint of it before the darkness catches up. This quatrain sends feelings of darkening, but also of warmth because of the imagery of the sunset. Also, its span of time has diminished from a season to a single night. The trends of darkening, warming and length of time decreasing also continue in this quatrain. The speaker compares himself to a fire that is burnt down to embers. He can not live like he did in his youth and the same things can not sustain him. He speaks of the flame being smothered by what first nourished it. This sounds as though he regrets his way of life and is now suffering because of it. In the third and final quatrain all the images had changed from how they started. At the beginning of the sonnet there was the yellow colorful leaves on the trees. Into the second quatrain darkness starts to invade the light and by the end of line twelve the last glowing ashes in the fire had gone out. As well the feeling of warmth increased throughout the sonnet. The speaker spoke of winter, then of sunset and finally of a fire. Length of time was another changing factor. A season became a night, and a night became a few ...