The Death of Creative Power in Sonnet 73Most of the 127 sonnets that Shakespeare wrote to one of his closest male friends are united by the theme of the overwhelming and destructive power of time , and the counterbalancing power of love and poetry to create and preserve beauty. Sonnet 73 is no different, but presents an intriguing twist on this theme. Most of these sonnets address the youth and beauty of his male friend, as well as the power of poetry to immortalize them, but number 73 addresses the author's mortality and the friend's love for him. Furthermore, subtly woven into this turning inward is the lament that the creative vitality represented by the poems themselves is fading, along with Shakespeare's own life. Shakespeare seems to mourn not his own mortality, but the fact that the creation of his love poems must one day cease, and this is a "death" more deeply felt by Shakespeare than mere mortality. As usual, the sonnet is divided into four convenient sections, the three quatrains and the final couplet. Each segment features a new image to make the point. The first quatrain begins with "you can see in me", then the second "in me you see" and the third also "in me you see" again. This repetition gives unity to the theme and helps convey ideas from one segment to the next. What follows in each stanza is a new image of decay and death. The sequence and relationship of these metaphors shows a conscious effort at continuity, showing the death of creative power in various forms. The first quatrain uses one of the oldest metaphors for approaching age and imminent death, the arrival of autumn. A couple of creative images make the... center of the card..." the entire song sequence not just the fire of love, but the fire of the immortalizing power that is creative genius. Shakespeare is writing about ashes of his creative "exhaustion": his knowledge that one day he will write no more poems. One day the sweet birds will sing no more, the creative sun will set and rest. Yet the last two lines remind us that love will survive too to that catastrophe. When he tells his friend that he is "strong/To love so well, that you must leave ere long" (13, 14), the antecedent of "that" is not only Shakespeare himself Shakespeare is also praising the his friend for a love so strong that it will survive even the one death that affects Shakespeare himself most: the "death" of the poetic sequence that elevated their friendship to the level of immortalized poetic figures..