Sonnet 73 takes up one of the most pressing issues of the first 126 sonnets, the speaker’s anxieties regarding what he perceives to be his advanced age, and develops the theme through a sequence of metaphors each implying something different. The imagery of autumn and winter, twilight and finally the yhe image of the fire consumed by the ashes of its youth all contribute to the elegiac tone of this sonnet, while exploring the same theme (senescence) in a progressive manner: that is, from imagery of sobriety or emptiness to the fire close to extinction, the metaphor closest to death and the closure of the speaker or lyric-I . Sonnet 73 is not simply a procession of interchangeable metaphors; it is the story of the speaker slowly coming to grips with the real finality of his age and his impermanence in time, with a final poignatn exhortation on the last two verses.
