“That time of year thou mayest in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang.”
(William Shakespeare, from Sonnet # 73)
This poem returns to haunt me every autumn with the ghost of Dr. George– my freshman English professor at Saint Joes University in Philadelphia.
It is only now, 25 years later, as I enter the autumn of my own life, that I begin to understand why Professor George is moved to tears when he recites this particular Shakespearean sonnet.
That time of year thou mayest in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
At 18, it is inexplicable to me that a poem could make anyone cry–let alone a grown man in a suit–who was old, but only generically so, like anyone else over 30.
It is my junior year in London that I get word that Professor George has passed away.
Upon whose boughs which shake against the cold,
bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
At 20, death is still so unfamiliar that I am shaken by this loss and feel guilty for all the complaints I’d ever held against my old professor: all those sonnets that he made us memorize; the time he kicked me out of class for offering a “poor” answer; the C he gave me on my descriptive essay.
That was a great essay. I still have it. It’s grease stained because I even had an Overbrook pizza delivered to my dorm room as research. I couldn’t understand how something so relevant to college life could be dismissed with a C! Dr. George was certainly not a pizza lover.
How then did his words, his spirit, “his” sonnet creep into my life?
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
A few years after graduation, my own grandfather faces death and I send him this poem– for which he expresses deep gratitude. Apparently, I am the only one who has honestly acknowledged how little time he has left–me, and Dr. George and Shakespeare.
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In my thirties, I relocate to New England where I begin to pay close attention to the shifting of seasons. I watch as the world outside my window moves from blush to green to gold to bare–and I am moved to write. Poetry.
It is early October, when the Ghost of Dr. George comes to call. I hush him, telling him it’s much too soon to speak of bare ruined choirs, but he silently points to the future, insisting that I know what is to come.
He never recites the whole poem–teasing me by repeating the first two lines again and again. And so I know. It is not (yet) my time.
And then I wonder, did he know?
Is that what brought tears to his eyes when he offered his tears to the disdainful audience of immortal 18 year olds?
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
I’m not sure why it is that Dr. George chooses to visit me year after year, but I’m glad that he does. Once I thought of him as a tyrant, but now I think of him–and his tyranny– as a friend.
For it was Dr. George who INSISTED that we KNOW the meaning of EACH and every WORD in each and every poem we read. So that after his class, none could say, I just don’t understand poetry.
I am ever so grateful for that forced understanding. With each year, it grows–as I am moved to tears by poems–who no doubt will be among my friends when at last my own time comes.
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
Kelly Salasin, 2009 (SJU Class of ‘85)
