again. Frank concludes by arguing that the end couplet, compared to the beautifully crafted logic of pathos created prior, is anticlimactic and redundant. The poem's first three quatrains mean more to the reader than the seemingly important summation of the final couplet. Though he agrees with Frank in that the poem seems to create two themes, one which argues for devotion from a younger lover to one who will not be around much longer, and another which urges the young lover to enjoy his fleeting youth, James Schiffer asserts that the final couplet, instead of being unneeded and unimportant, brings the two interpretations together. In order to understand this, he explains that the reader must look at the preceding sonnets, 71 and 72, and the subsequent sonnet, 74. He explains: The older poet may desire to "love more strong" from the younger man but feels, as 72 discloses, that he does not deserve it. This psychological conflict explains why the couplet hovers equivocally between the conclusions "to love me", which the persona cannot bring himself to ask for outright, and "to love your youth", the impersonal alternative exacted by his self-contempt. By reading the final couplet in this manner, the reader will realize that the two discordant meanings of the final statement do in fact merge to provide a more complex impression of the author's state of mind. Furthermore, this successfully puts the focus of the reader on the psyche of the "I", which is the subject of the following sonnet 74. Possible sources for the third quatrain's metaphor A few possible sources have been suggested for both of two passages in Shakespeare's works: a scene in the play Pericles, and the third quatrain in Sonnet 73. In the scene in Pericles an emblem or impresa borne on a shield is described as bearing the image of a burning torch held upside down along with the Latin phrase Qui me alit, me extinguit ("what nourishes me, destroys me"). In the quatrain of Sonnet 73 the image is of a fire being choked by ashes, which is a bit different from an upside down torch, however the quatrain contains in English the same idea that is expressed in Latin on the impressa in Pericles: "Consum'd with that which it was nourished by." "Consumed" may not be the obvious word choice for being extinguished by ashes, but it allows for the irony