Sonnet 73

Sonnet 73, one of William Shakespeare's most famous sonnets, focuses upon the theme of old age, with each of the three quatrains encompassing a metaphor. The sonnet is pensive in tone, and although it is written to a young friend, it is wholly introspective until the final couplet, which finally turns to the person who is addressed. Joseph Kau suggests that Samuel Daniel had a fair amount of influence on this sonnet and that Shakespeare's immediate source of the impresa, or motto, "Qua me alit me extinguit" came from Geoffrey Whitney's A Choice of Emblems