In Williams Shakespeare’s sonnet That Time of Year Thou Mayst In Me Behold, the speaker uses metaphors to characterize his old age. Multiple metaphors build on each other to help better describe and understand the reader. Throughout the sonnet, the speaker’s time gets shorter. He refers to his old age, the last hours of his life, and finally his passing. Felling’s of sadness are brought about by the speaker’s metaphors. William Shakespeare uses multiple metaphors relating to nature in That Time of Year Thou Mayst In Me Behold that build on each other. In the first quatrain, the speaker describes his age like late autumn. Leaves are falling to the ground, leaving the trees almost bare. Cold has swept over, and the birds have left their branches.
