Edith Matilda Thomas's Winter Leafage

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Edith Matilda Thomas, in her vehement sonnet “Winter Leafage,” asserts that we should not “cling” to our past. To develop her claim, Thomas begins by first using imagery to describe a tree that refuses to let go of summer; the tree is “dry, wan, and shivering” in the winter weather because it is clothed in garments that are meant for the summer and this serves to show that by holding onto the past, we fail to live in the present; second, the tree is compared to a “palsied miser” and this reveals how pointless it is for the tree to be holding onto something that has passed; third, personification is used when the tree is said to “sigh, moan, and sing,” which makes a connection between the tree and humans so that it can better be understood that