Sonnet

Shakespeare's sonnets are a great look at love and its complexity--the truth about it, the odd contradictions and weird little feelings. One sonnet is great to read in autumn, it has a real sense of fall.

Try reading this sonnet two lines at a time, once in a while. If you are unused to this style, don't force it. Slowly fall into it. Think about what you feel about each metaphor or phrase, and then try to tie them together. There's a lot of ideas here, a lot of brilliance. Give it time, try it many times--give it its due. You don't much better and elegant than Shakespeare.

It's no. 73 [also, all sonnets were simply 'titled' by their first line, so numbers are simpler]:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
  This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
  To love that well which thou must leave ere long.