A Mid-Autumn Night's Dream

"Love is talent" can therefore be perceived as a metaphor for the happiness that love imparts on those who are able to experience it. The brevity of the assertion is perplexingly compelling, and entices the reader to unashamedly indulge in the poet's rich and illustrious imagery in the lines that ensue. The speaker employs a fluid tonality in the opening line of the poem, using soft, placid vowels and consonants to possibly denote the graceful and harmonious nature of love. In lines 1-2, Duffy presents somewhat of a literary crescendo. The soft tonality of the opening line is then abrasively heightened with the inflection of the 'f' consonant in "Aflame". This stark contrast could allude to the unpredictability that love personifies; love is therefore framed as indecisive and precarious in the line's ephemeral bathos. The term could further underscore a crucial theme of the poem, as fire, in the context of love, is generally associated with passion. The speaker could also be commenting on the vivid shades of color that autumn bestows upon the earth, rendering the picturesque autumn colour-changes of nature which wanes in the seasonal presage of a destructive, malevolent winter. The speaker's imagery of the seasonal changes could imply that the person, to whom the speaker professes incredible sentiment for2, is presumably deceased. The use of seasonal-change in most works of literature is generally used as a metaphor to represent life and death; winter brings death and destruction and spring bequeaths restoration and new life. In line 4, the poet paints quite an ominous scene of the withering leaves of autumn, whirling wistfully to their inevitable deaths. However, in retrospection to Duffy's words in line 2, the leaves embrace the wind in "[adoration]"; they seem to be completely receptive to the idea of death in the author's use of the term 'adore'.