That Time of Year

The title, That Time of Year, feeds into the first metaphor of the poem of autumn. It is fairly certain that Shakespeare is talking about autumn when he writes, "When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang." However, the poem is not very light-hearted like some poems about fall. Shakespeare says "Bare ruined choirs" which implies some sort of a negative connotation to fall. The theme of death is not explicitly stated until the middle of the poem when Shakespeare directly says death. Shakespeare also compares death to twilight. The poem talks of the dark night taking over the dying autumn day. Additionally, Shakespeare compares death to a fire. The fire is killed by its own ashes that it produces. Shakespeare describes the ashes as the fire's youth. The fire is like a person's life. It burns bright in its youth with great energy. The fire is not capable of maintaining this energy forever, and is eventually put out by all the ashes it produced. This like how a person's life loses its energy and brightness slowly until they die (yeah that's kind of dark, I know). However, the poem ends  on a sort of good note when Shakespeare says that someone's love will live on much stronger than that person's life.