![]() ![]() “Hang” is both a technical and a metaphoric enjambment that magnifies the speaker’s dependency and physical weakness. Shakespeare finishes his description of the leaves, which “hang/ Upon those boughs which shake against the cold” (2-3). Still, the monosyllabic, caesura-laden intonations of the line cannot hide the speaker’s automaton-like march to death. This current of definition develops two themes, that Shakespeare believes he still has a few leaves left on his tree of life, and that the poetic eye of his lover can amplify the energy of even a bare tree. ![]() Shakespeare continues the conceit of subject refinement as he first describes Autumn’s “yellow leaves” as simply existing, then concedes there may be “none,” then finally settles on “few” (2). In the second and third quatrains this is inverted, as “In me thou seest” becomes a more insistent and refined initiation (5, 9). That “me” comes after “thou” and near the end of the line also signifies the lack of detail the speaker places on himself in the first quatrain. Shakespeare fails to specify even what season he is referring to in the opening line it is known only as “That time of the year thou mayst in me behold” (1). The first quatrain examines the sonnet’s most general metaphoric description of the speaker’s aging body, Autumn. ![]()
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