In Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 “That time of year you may see in me”, the focus is on the narrator's anxiety about growing old and his impending death. Each quatrain expresses this in a distinctive way, associating the narrator's stage of life with a variety of analogies that show how time passes in nature. There is a marked reduction in time: from seasons to days to minutes. As time decreases, the speed with which the narrator approaches death increases. Ultimately, death is imminent and is obvious to the narrator as it becomes obvious to his audience and the reader. In the first quatrain (Q1), the narrator refers to the season of autumn quickly turning into winter, the time of year when the leaves on the trees turn from green, to red, and yellow and then begin to shed them. John Hurley explains Q1 as "a beautiful analogy, [of] a man in the winter of his life, clearly winter, for the leaves are few and those that remain are yellow". (Hurley 1) The narrator is painting a portrait of himself as an old man, but still a lover. The fact that he is a lover is described by the use of a more intimate word tu rather than you in the opening line. As the narrator portrays himself as the leafless tree with trembling branches that are now empty, but once held many songbirds, Shakespeare makes an intellectual appeal to the reader to see that the narrator is in the winter of his life and that death is near. .In quatrain two (Q2) the narrator reduces the time left from seasons to days. Being in the twilight of his life, the narrator is still facing death and still laments, “In me you see the twilight of such a day / As after sunset it fades in the west.” (lines 5-6) Once again there is an analogy between the...... middle of the paper...... hard). The order of the images used, also dictated by the "pathos", ranges from the year, as represented by the seasons; per day, as shown by sunset; to the fire that burns and reminds readers that aging and death are part of life. The fact is that death is imminent as it refers to the end of all cycles: the dying year, the dying day, the dying fire, the dying human. This is emphasized and repeated in such a way that the audience and reader can easily perceive it. Works Cited Frank, Berhard. "Shakespeare's Sonnet 73." The Explicator 62.1 (2003): 3+. Literary resources from Gale. Network. April 10, 2011.Hurley, John. Shakespeare as teacher. 1998. ERIC. EBSCO. Network. April 10, 2011.Shakespeare, William. “That time of year you can see in me.” Bedford's introduction to literature. Ed. Michael Mayer. 9th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. 1344. Print