sons meet and intermingle, probably fall, when the last of the roses are in bloom and an early snow surprises those whose consciousness was still dwelling in an autumnal state. The snow can be seen as a symbol of not only the season of winter, but also of the latter stages of life. Perhaps the speaker before he began to write the poem was in a peaceful moment of unawareness of his own aging, and the sudden snow threw him into a state of acute awareness of not only the passing of time but the passing of his own life as well.
Still, the speaker is hardly in a place of grieving or depression at the prospect of aging or death. Instead, he is in an excited state, a state of suddenly heightened awareness of all the contradictory parts of life. his is demonstrated by the appearance of "suddenly" in the first
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