Let's talk a little bit about the organization of this poem. This is a Shakespearean sonnet, which the introduction says "consists of three quatrains and a concluding couplet." In this case, the first three quatrains present three different images, and the concluding couplet presents a . . . conclusion. I don't want to keep calling the quatrains "quatrain one," "quatrain two," and "quatrain three," so I'll call them "Blistex," "Headphones," and "Lanyard," respectively.
Blistex introduces an image of autumn turning to winter -- "when yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang" (2). Headphones discusses the end of the day -- "after sunset fadeth in the west" (6) -- and refers to "death's second self" (8) which confuses me. Is "death's second self" the end of the day? Finally, Lanyard talks about a fire that burns life -- "the glowing of such fire, / That on the ashes of his youth doth lie" (9-10).
The images of Blistex, Headphones, and Lanyard all discuss the end to something usually regarded as beautiful (autumn, daytime, and life). They also all say something about how whomever the speaker is addressing sees those images in the speaker. Just looking at those three stanzas alone, the speaker seems to me like a person who destroys all life that crosses its path like a bulldozer, so I'm assuming I should try to understand the concluding couplet. I quoted it at the beginning of the post.
I'm not very good at paraphrasing Shakespeare. I'll try. "You see these images in me, so your love for me is growing stronger." And then there's a weird infinitive phrase, and I'm not sure how it fits with the other line. "To love aptly what you must leave before long." I suppose autumn, daytime, and life are all things we love but have to leave before long. I think the speaker is comparing his audience's (his love's?) views of him to how we view those three images; his love knows that he's not going to be around forever, so she loves him even more.
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