Bare Ruined Choirs

A few minutes ago I was looking at the branches of a tree outside my window and thought of the line from Shakespeare’s Sonnet number 73: “bare ruined choirs.” The metaphor has always struck me as remarkable, but I never tried to think out why. The branches are just now beginning to bud and in two months they will be filled with leaves. But in the winter they are bare. So they are indeed choirs, but bare and ruined in winter, but in summer they are lush, a full choir of birds.