"As the deathbed whereon it must expire, / Consumed with that which it was nourished by. / This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, / To love that well which thou must leave ere long."
This quote truly has a lot of meaning to the poem. I recognized the central theme of the poem as a person telling his lover that this life is old and dreary, but the two must make the most of life. The imagery in the poem is very colorful. For instance, the speaker begins the poem talking about "yellow leaves." Yellow typically symbolizes happiness and newness. So maybe the yellow at the beginning represents the hope of life but "few do hang." (There is not much hope in the speaker's world at the moment). Then, the poem goes on to talk about the "sunset fadeth." Again, the hope is fading away. After that, I noticed that the imagery became darker: "which by black night doth take away." This makes it seem that darkness is taking over. Finally, the in the last stanza, the spaker says "death's second self seals up all in rest." I felt that this symbolized that a person's inner sadness is the ultimate thing that kills a man inside. The turn at the end of the poem is very intriguing though. It's almost a turn-around; the entire poem is dreary until this point. The quote that is listed above is symbolizing that we must not be "consumed" with the things that "nourish" us. Rather, we should allow the world to nourish us and love the things on earth while we still can.
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