Similar theme continues in “Before the Summer Dies”. The narrator observes the sun going down and everyone is falling “like leaves from the sky”, thus indicating of the overall feeling of melancholy of people. As in the earlier example, the summer is personified as a female and “she” is being tamed down by North winds and “chased away for a lifetime”. Accordingly, we see the connection to the North once more. In “Autumn Fire” the people were referred as crows, whereas in “Before the Summer Dies” they are referred as children. This implies of innocence and hopelessness, and in comparison to “Autumn Fire” the change seems hastier and harsher as people “pray upon the fading light”. The narrator compares the fading summer to time that “Runs through your fingers”, highlighting the role of passing of time in evoking longing. The following lines “And night will harvest us down / Before the words of goodbye” implying of swiftness of time as well as of the uncomfortable change. …show more content…
The narrator’s calmness seen in the beginning is replaced by more melancholic tone as he tells how his withered heart, friends and even life in general has lost their meaning, thus emphasizing the narrator’s feelings of disappointment and sorrow. The narrator refers to his heart as a tomb, hereby implying of feelings such as numbness, pessimism, and inactiveness and that all of those feelings are buried in his heart. He accuses his heart of turning everything that he used to regard as “happy” into “dust”. This can be interpreted that there was a time when the narrator was surrounded by his friends and life felt promising and rewarding, however those day are gone and now he feels like he is lost. The following lines affirm the narrator’s longing for death as he wonders if the “Last rays of the evening sun” have come to take him