Sonnet #1 Response #5

Erin Conley
Mrs. Jernigan
AP English Lit
23 February 2011
Sonnet #1
William Shakespeare’s “That Time of Year,” flows from description of the weather to the emotional death of a loved one to emphasize the metaphor that lives are like seasons because they are always changing. In this poem, Shakespeare is contemplating the loss of a loved one and showing how it is like the coming of winter.
The format of a Shakespearean sonnet is three quatrains followed by a couplet. This emphasizes the movement of the poem. The first quatrain describes the change in the weather. He shows the reader that it is winter by saying the “yellow leaves…hang” as they are “[shaken] against the cold.” Shakespeare is showing the sad, harsh effects of winter. The next two quatrains describe Shakespeare’s mood, which mirrors the weather. This connection is important to see how upset Shakespeare is about the death and how it affects him. He uses harsh diction such as “ashes,” “black night,” “deathbed,” and “consumed” to show the depressing tone of the poem. The last couplet not only wraps up the poem but also shows Shakespeare’s true purpose of the poem. The couplet states that since our loved ones are given to us for only a short amount of time, we need to love them well. This provides the hope and theme to the sonnet, which the reader is now desperate for towards the end because of all the depressing scenes in the earlier lines.
The form of a Shakespearean sonnet is crucial to understanding this poem, because the reader is able to trace the development of thought from impersonal to personal to show that seasons of life are fragile, so we must take advantage of them.