Sonnet 73, one of the most famous of William Shakespeare's 154 sonnets, focuses on the theme of old age. The sonnet addresses the Fair Youth. Each of the three quatrains contains a metaphor: Autumn, the passing of a day, and the dying out of a fire. Each metaphor proposes a way the young man may see the poet. Analysis and synopsis Barbara Estermann discusses William Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 in relation to the beginning of the Renaissance. She argues that the speaker of Sonnet 73 is comparing himself to the universe through his transition from "the physical act of aging to his final act of dying, and then to his death". Esterman clarifies that throughout the three quatrains of Shakespeare's Sonnet 73; the speaker "demonstrates man's relationship to the cosmos and the parallel properties which ultimately reveal his humanity and his link to the universe. Shakespeare thus compares the fading of his youth through the three elements of the universe: the fading of life, the fading of the light, and the dying of the fire". The first quatrain is described by Seymour-Smith: "a highly compressed metaphor in which Shakespeare visualizes the ruined arches of churches, the memory of singing voices still echoing in them, and compares this with the naked boughs of early winter with which he identifies himself". In the second quatrain, Shakespeare focuses on the "twilight of such day" as death approaches throughout the nighttime. Barbara Estermann states that "he is concerned with the change of light, from twilight to sunset to black night, revealing the last hours of life". Of the third quatrain, Carl D. Atkins remarks, "As the fire goes out when the wood which has been feeding it is consumed, so is life extinguished when the strength of youth is past". Barbara Estermann says it is concerned with "the fading out of life's energy". Structure Sonnet 73 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the rhyme scheme of the English sonnet form, ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. It is composed in iambic pentameter, a poetic metre that has five feet per line, and each foot has two syllables accented weak then strong. Almost all of the lines follow this without variation, including the second line: × / × / × / × / × / When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang