The metaphors shorten in duration from months to hours to what may be minutes, the acceleration itself a metaphor for the increasingly rapid rate at which old age begins to take its toll on the human body. The sonnet focuses on the narrator's own anxiety over growing old and, like sonnet 60, each quatrain of sonnet 73 takes up the theme in a unique way, comparing the narrator's "time of year" (i.e., stage of life) with various examples of the passing of time in nature. Sonnet 73 is almost as exemplary as sonnet 60 in expressing the theme of the ravages of time. "This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong / To love that well which thou must leave ere long."īecause you see this, your love is made stronger, to love well that which you must soon leave. The ashes are now the death-bed upon which the fire will go out, consumed by the very thing it was nourished by before. "As the death-bed whereon it must expire / Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by." You see in me the glowing of a fire that is burning atop the ashes of its earlier burning (my youth), "In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire / That on the ashes of his youth doth lie," Which before long is replaced by the black night, Death's second self, which covers everything in a deathly sleep. "Which by and by black night doth take away / Death's second self, that seals up all in rest." You see in me the twilight of my life, like when the sunset has faded to darkness in the west, "In me thou seest the twilight of such day / As after sunset fadeth in the west,"
(The leaves hang on) branches, which shiver in anticipation of the cold the branches are like empty, ruined church choir pews, and sweet birds used to sing on the branches. "Upon those boughs which shake against the cold / Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang." You may see in me the autumn of my life, like the time when yellow leaves, or no leaves, or a few leaves still hang "That time of year thou mayst in me behold / When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang"
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