[Line 1]* - 'this time of year' being late autumn or early winter.[Line 2]* - Compare the line to Macbeth (5.3.23) "my way of life / fell into the sere, the yellow leaf".[Line 4]* - 'Ruined bare choirs' is a reference to the remains of a church or, more precisely, of a choir, stripped of its roof and exposed to the elements. In the past, choirs resounded to the sound of “sweet birds”. Some argue that lines 3 and 4 should be read without pause – the “yellow leaves” tremble against the “cold/bare ruined choirs”. If we assume that the adjective "cold" modifies "Ruined choirs", then the image becomes more concrete: these branches sweep away the ruins of the church. Some editors, however, choose to insert "like" at the beginning of line 4, thereby modifying the passage to mean "the branches of the yellow leaves tremble against the cold like the toothed arches of the choir loft exposed to the cold." Noted 18th-century scholar George Steevens commented that this image “was probably suggested to Shakespeare by our desolate monasteries. The resemblance between the vault of a Gothic [sic] island and an avenue of trees whose upper branches meet and form an arch above, is too striking not to be recognized. When the roof of one is broken and the branches of the other leafless, the comparison becomes more solemn and picturesque” (Smith 148).[Line 7]* – “dark night” is a metaphor. for death itself. Just as the “dark night” draws nearer to the remaining light of day, so does death draw nearer to the poet. [Line 8]* - “The second self of death”, i.e. “the dark night” or “sleep”. Macbeth refers to sleep as “the death of daily life” (2.2.49). ....the west, After the sunset in the west, Which little by little the dark night takes away, Which is soon extinguished by the black night, The second self of death, which seals everything in rest. The image of death which envelops everything in rest. In me you see the glow of such fire. In me you can see the glowing embers that lie on the ashes of his youth, that lie on the remaining ashes of the flame of my youth, like the deathbed on which he must expire As on a deathbed where he (the youth) must finally die Consumed with that which nourished him. Consumed by what once nourished him. makes your love more determined to love this good that you must leave before long. making you love what you must give up before long.