Sunday, March 16, 2008

Shakespeare

For my critical blog I decided to go through line by line of William Shakespeare's poem "That the time of year thou mayst in me behold". Shakespeare can be a little tricky to understand so maybe this will help a little.

That time of year you can behold me
When the leaves are gone or are yellow
On the branches that shake in the cold
Where birds once sung but no longer do
In me you will see a twilight of a day
After the sunsets in the west
Which shortly the night takes over
You will sleep
In me you will see a fire
That once was his childhood
That has died
His memories are also dead
This you will see will make our love stronger
The love which you must have forever

This is my own interpretation of the poem and might not necessarily be correct.

2 comments:

Erinn said...

This is a great idea, Kirsten! With poems (or any texts) written in a slightly archaic form of English, it can be so helpful to simply "rewrite" the poem in contemporary words. I think your interpretation definitely gets at the concepts Shakespeare is exploring here...aging, memories, love...it's all in there!

Sara Bardsley said...

I agree with you on how Shakespeare's writing is very tricky to read at times. I like how you interpreted the poem by explaining what each line really means. It helped me out a lot and now I have a better understanding of what the poem means.