Reflection of Sonnet 2

Sonnet 2 uses the seasons as a metaphor of the process of aging. The forty winters is a time marker of the average forty years that a person during that time had to live. The word “besiege” in the first line makes the idea of aging as a negative process, and thus setting the stage for the rest of the sonnet. The words relating to war and the words relating to nature intermix throughout the sonnet. In line two, the words trenches can play a double meaning in both nature and war, even though trench warfare was not very popular, to say the least, in the Middle Ages, but looking at it now in modern way, the word “trenches” can have two placements. This sonnet also uses dialogue which is rare in Shakespeare’s sonnets. This sonnet also directly addresses the audience as thou, which I believe is odd because the sonnet before it was very indirectly addressing anybody at all.