Seasons
The opening quatrain of Shakespeare's poem uses the concept of the seasons as a metaphor for the process of growing older. Any guesses which season he picks? Well that would depend on what time of...
Twilight
In quatrain 2, Shakespeare introduces a whole new set of imagery, this time based on the fading sunset at the end of a day. What makes this imagery interesting is that Shakespeare makes it clear th...
Fire
Quatrain 1's imagery based on the seasons makes the speaker sound pretty much decrepit and wasted, "shak[ing] against the cold." Quatrain 2 wasn't quite such a downer at first, but the light of the...
Love
The big twist that comes about in line 13 of the poem is the new theme that makes its appearance: love. At this point in the poem, there isn't much new in the way of imagery; instead, we get the di...