That time of year thou may'st 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 west,
Which by-and-by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
Memory work first thing in the morning is always best. Before the internal music and dialogue of the mind gets too complicated. In fact, the more out of sorts I am in the mornings, my head still filled with the stuff of dreams, the stronger the memorization seems to be.
It is best to have three or four sonnets to focus on. My usual practice is to work on one primarily - and this is important with regard to memory - then to sort of casually move through the others. For example, this morning I am working on the sequence from 70 to 73 - with focus on 73 in particular. What happens is this:
There is a quick mumbling out loud read-through scan of the four sonnets 70 to 73.
I note strong imagery in each:
Sonnet 70: A crow that flies in Heaven's sweetest air:
Crow
This imagistic line will most likely be the index image that marks the poem. So early on I am searching for that strong image that will stand out.
Sonnet 71: From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:
Worms
Sonnet 72: My name be buried where my body is:
Buried Name
Sonnet 73: Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang:
Choirs or
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day:
Twilight - notable for being the only instance of that word in all the sonnets
There typically will be one that is a favorite, more preferred: Sonnet 73.
After reading through the others out loud, I slow down to listen to the language of 73. Here I try to puzzle out the sequence of dramatic images and begin to get inside the sonnet. Access to the interior architecture of the sonnets takes time and often it is only after having completely learned it by heart that I can begin to understand it's interior meaning.
So for now what I am interested in are the memorable elements that immediately strike out at me. With assistance Booth and Paterson, I can break the quatrains into mapping images:
Q1: Tree
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake
Q2: Day
Twilight of such day
Q3: Fire
There is also movement
from year to day to immediate temporality
That time of year / twilight of such day / glowing of such fire
from cold to hot:
shake against the cold / glowing of such fire
from light to dark:
behold when yellow leaves /
thou sees the twilight /
as after sunset /
black night doth take it away /
So with these mapping images in place, I work out the essential narrative:
Shakespeare tells the Young Man in three different ways that he is getting older, many believe the
yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang are coded reference to his baldness. It makes no difference if this is true or not, it is a strong image to hold on to. So he's getting old and decrepit, hair falling out, his arms like old tree limbs shaking against ruined choirs in ruined cathedrals where there is only a distant memory of birdsong.
He says he is so old that he is like the twilight, which is
after the sun has set below that horizon, and that the figure of black night as Death's second self is sealing up everything. There is a striking image of stitching up the eyes of the dead that is resonate.
He says he is so used up, he as a fading fire that is burning on the ashes of his former, youthful self and these ashes [empty memories] are the only fuel left to feed this flame. There is no more substantial fuel and the fire is consuming itself. [ Direst echo back to the first Sonnet. ]
Since the Young Man can see all of this and still continue to love such a balding, decrepit, blackened, and used up near dead creature indicates the Young Man's love must be strong and true.
So now I have a sense of the story of the sonnet and I start to actually memorize.
At this point it is helpful to take notice of repetition of word and phrase, meter and rhyme.
I take it a Quatrain at a time.
That time of year thou mayest in me behold
I know what the sonnet is about and can safely imagine a bleak winter as the time of year. Then I imagine this winter personified as an old man. This Old Man is beaten down with age almost equivalent with a personification of Death, something out of a Holbein print: skeletal thin, flesh hanging from his bones, scraps of hair upon his skin covered skull.
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
and since these lines are enjambed, I include the next two in my imagining:
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
I see the Old Man Shakespeare as a skeletal tree with arms for tree limbs. There is a shifting image here of the yellow autumnal leaves, now shivering on the limbs, now the limbs are bare, actually, just a few leaves remain. The tree stands in a ruined Cathedral in a bleak twilight winterscape, next to it are the remains of a ruined wooden choir, empty bird's nest visible. The cold wind shakes the branches against the choir. I can hear the rattling sound and there is the nostalgia for the song of the absent birds and, layered underneath, the singing of the choirboys when in bygone days before the Cathedral was ruined and the god departed the world.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day,
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
I take note that that Q2 begins as a variation of the the first line of Q1:
me thou sees / year thou mayest. Also, knowing it's a rare word in Shakespeare, I make special note of Twilight. Above the the tree with a few yellow leaves next to the ruined choir haunted with absent birdsong, it is Twilight. I can hear the poet taking a breath and speaking with a voice full of resignation. Shakespeare knows he looks the end of a long day. There is not golden sunset on his features. He is beyond that. The sun no longer shines for him. It has set below the horizon.
Which by-and-by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
Black night and Death are waiting, seeping into the world like ink into water, eclipsing all light. The image of Black Night as Death walking slowly along, sealing the tombs with darkness, stitching up the eyes of those in sleep. Resonance with Sleep as the Brother of Death.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie
Q3 follows the same first line pattern, repetition as incantation, of Q2:
In me thous seest. The final image of Shakespeare as the used up Old Man is the self-consuming fire. Reference back to Sonnet 1. The image is not of a burning fire throwing off light and energy, but of one that has died down to a glow, all of the wood burned to ash. I see here a few pulsing red coals on a bed of ash. Those last breaths of life.
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
The Pulse of the fire, that low glowing flame aura, barely hovering over the ashes, on the utmost point of going out.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
And now, I see Shakespeare and the Young Man in some tavern, sitting across from each other at a table. Shakespeare with tired resigned eyes. However, the Young Man still looks upon him with love and passion. Shakespeare says, after all of this I have shown you: the balding, skeletal, blackened and used up creature, after all of this, if you still love me, then your love must be strong. Especially to love this thing that you know will not be here very much longer.
