Ashes to Ashes - Sonnet 73

The metaphor moves from the immobile, ordinary leaves to some boughs, and distinct leaves, which shakes against the cold and to counter off the approaching death with their best. Shakespeare also alludes to the monasteries rummaged by Henry VIII with Bare ruind quiers, accumulating the passion behind the line of mortality. The line beginning with Bare and ending with the word sang juxtaposes the artificial unhappiness with the lack of natural life, paradoxically developing in fervor as the speaker laments the things perishing around him. This takes the reader into the next quatrain where the speaker immediately claims himself as the subject within, further strengthening both the speaker and the Fair Young Mans enquiry of the speakers fading.
             The idea of fading away is the professed metaphor utilized in the second quatrain. Shakespeare shifts from the broadest season to a more specific day as he move from just the yellow leaves to those boughs. Once again, the poet transforms his delineation of the time of day from the estimated twilight of such day (5) to the more specific time frame, as after sunset fadeth in the west (6). The intensification of poetry power paired with the speakers literal deadening begins to create a self-hating tone. But before the Fair Young Man mayst behold, (5) with another unclear, vague line, the speaker now definitely seest (5). The helplessness the speaker senses in his mind deepens here. While the first quatrain shook the boughs against the cold choirs, now he permits his light to be faded: Which by and by blacke night doth take away,/ Deaths second selfe that seals up all in rest (7-8). The by and by indicates the transit of time and the speakers passive characteristic in the dimming light, while the strong alliteration of Bs sound rather spiteful then loving, as if the speaker observes the dark night raid him of his life. Line 8s Deaths second selfe, in this case correlating with sleep, utilizes the alliteration of the slippery S sounds, echoing the speakers poisonous downfall into death itself.