That time of year / William Shakespeare

Shakespeare is relating death with fall and the death or hibernation of nature.  Death is a part of nature that cannot be out run or evaded.  Death finds everything.  The poem’s speaker is an old gentleman. He is associating the end of a late fall day with the closing days of his life. Death comes quietly like sleep. He is laying on the failed dreams of his youth.  He thinks of the things he aspired to do and they stay with him unto his death.  “Consumed with that which it was nourished by,” (Shakespeare 967).  This quote shows how his dreams are affecting him now. In his youth they fuelled him on to try and accomplish better and better things.  In his old age they now eat away at his contentment and consume him with regrets.