Sonnet LXXIII

I am preparing today to teach my little composition class about the Shakespearean sonnet tomorrow, and I can't wait.  There are, of course, some sonnets that 13 and 14 year olds can't entirely appreciate.  Their life experience is simply not deep or broad enough yet.  But I hope to build the beginnings of appreciation in them.  I am enjoying contemplating Will's Sonnet 73.  But I am not sure I really understood it until recently:

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 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 perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

I hope you will enjoy contemplating it as well, Gentle Reader.